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THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 



^ 



THE CALL <rf 
The REPUBLIC 

A National Army and 
Universal Military Service 



BY ^yV 

JENNINGS Ci WISE 

author of 
"empire and armament," "the long arm of lee," etc. 



*'Me thinkes if were meete that any one, be- 
fore he come to be a captayne, should have 
bene a soldiour." — Spbnseh. 



"Where'er thy Navy spreads her canvas wings, 
Homage to thee, and peace to all, she brings." 

— Waller. 



NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON & CO. 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 






Copyright, 191 7, 
E. P. Button & Co. 



f^ 



^rinteb in tfie SIniteb Atatti of Stnerica 



APR II 1917 

CI.A400256 



PREFACE 

Not long ago, in the cover illustration of a 
great popular weekly, Uncle Sam was repre- 
sented holding in his hands a flint-lock musket 
and closely examining its ancient mechanism. 
The expression on his face was a puzzled one, 
for he seemed not only to be unfamiliar 
with the obsolete piece, but impatient with it. 
It seemed as if his mind had fully grasped the 
dangers of depending upon a weapon so 
thoroughly antiquated and inadequate to his 
pressing needs. The picture was a good one, 
and I could not but wonder if the cartoonist 
himself understood the fullness of its signifi- 
cance. This reflection led me on to further cog- 
itation and I determined to answer, in a very 
thorough way, the question that arose in my 
mind. That question was, not how shall he 
defend himself, but with what weapon will 
Uncle Sam henceforth oppose his foes? 

The observations that follow in this book 
comprise the answer. The author promises his 
readers that pacifism and pacific principles will 



PREFACE 

not be dwelt upon. The most effective system 
of national military preparedness alone will be 
considered. 

Not long ago I visited Vicksbnrg and com- 
pleted a tour of the defensive lines of the city. 
East of the city there runs a semicircular ridge 
from the river on the North back to the river on 
the South — a great, natural rampart, along the 
crest of which was the Confederate position. 
Upon examining this line I saw that it was not 
the science of men alone that had defended 
Vicksburg, but that in the memorable siege Na- 
ture had played no small part, for the artillery 
of Grant was powerless against that massive 
work she had thrown up. And then I contem- 
plated how impotent even Nature was to-day to 
defend against the modern science of war, for 
I knew that the great guns of Europe could 
raze the rampart which she had thrown about 
Vicksburg almost as easily as they could de- 
stroy one erected by mortal hands. This 
thought led my mind to dwell upon other de- 
fensive works of Nature — those oceans that 
separate America from Europe and Asia which 
time has rendered as obsolete for defense as the 
moats of medieval fortresses. 

^^Only the law of change is changeless," I 
said to myself, and looking up, read in endur- 

vi 



PREFACE 

ing bronze over the portal of the superb monu- 
ment which the generous State of Illinois had 
erected to the memory of its soldiers, these 
words : 

''We have but little to do to preserve peace, 
happiness and prosperity at home, and the re- 
spect of the nations. Our experience ought to 
teach us the necessity of the first, our power 
secures the latter. — U. S. Grant.'' 

And here too there was change; Grant con- 
scientiously could not write those words to-day, 
for Nature has withdrawn her aid from us, and 
we have failed utterly to develop an artificial 
power capable of overcoming the resulting 
weakness of our position. We have failed to 
see the warning in Jeremiah: ''Arise, get up 
unto the wealthy nation, that dwelleth with- 
out care, saith the Lord, which have neither 
gates nor bars, which dwell alone. And their 
camels shall be a booty and the multitude of 
their cattle a spoil ... I will brijig their ca- 
lamity from all sides. ' ' 

If this work shall contribute in some small 
measure, however little, to bring to the nation 
that vision without which our people will per- 
ish, it will not have been written in vain. 

J. C. W. 



vu 



FOEEWOED 

BY MAJOR GENEEAL LEONARD WOOD, IT. S. A. 

Colonel Jennings S. Wise is especially well 
qualified to present to the public the question 
of universal service both from the standpoint 
of a student of military history, in which field 
he has done much and most excellent work, and 
also from the standpoint of a trained and ex- 
perienced soldier. Colonel Wise is a graduate 
of Virginia Military Institute and for a long 
time was connected with that institution in vari- 
ous capacities. He has also had experience in 
the field. He has written extensively and very 
ably on military subjects and appreciates the 
danger and folly of further dependence for na- 
tional defense upon the haphazard system of 
the past, a system which has stamped itself 
upon our military policy and has resulted in 
great and unnecessary sacrifice of life and 
treasure in our wars and military operations. 

He brings out very clearly the new conditions 
of organization, involving all the resources of 
a nation, which characterize modern prepared- 

ix 



FOREWORD 

ness, and presents in a most convincing manner 
the reasons for universal training and service. 
He makes clear the unwisdom and danger of 
further delay in meeting conditions which, 
whether they be fortunate or unfortunate, ex- 
ist and form a part of the great world life of 
the day, conditions which make war possible 
and at times inevitable for all nations who have 
convictions and a sense of right, nations whose 
people believe that at times it is better to break 
the peace than to break the faith. This condi- 
tion of possible war we must be prepared to 
meet and meet promptly if we wish to continue 
our existence as a nation. It is a book which 
all Americans can read with profit and one 
which, if heeded, will add much to national well 
being and security. 

Headquarters Eastern Department, 
Governor's Island, N. Y., 
March 7, 1917. 



X 



CONTENTS 

The Call of the Republic 1 



CHAPTEB 



I. Introductory 5 

II. The Ancient Medieval Military Sys- 
tems 1^ 

III. Origin and Development op the Mod- 

ern National Army 25 

IV. Military Service in Its Most Demo- 

cratic Form 35 

V. The English Ideal op Voluntary Ser- 
vice ^^ 

VI. The Inherited American Ideal ... 50 

VII. The American Military System . . 64 

VIII. The Ideal Military Institution . . 96 

IX. The Fear of Militarism Unreason- 
able 120 

Bibliography ^^^ 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 



n 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 



1. 



Awake freemen — awake! 

If not for self, for country's sake 

Let your unclouded eyes 

Penetrate the specious guise 

Of that false schism 

Adroitly styled Pacificism. 

Know ye the truth — 

The iron of the rudest State 

Can still decide the fate 

Of any reahn 

That casts aside its mail and helm. 

While ruled the world hy Mars 

And his perpetual wars, 

No race muy long secure release 

From strife, nor purchase peace. 



2. 



Awake freemen— awake! 
Let not these shallow pratings shake 

1 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

Tour fadth in steel, or dull 

Tour sight with hope, or lull 

Tou into fatuous dreams. 

Still on earth is might 

The final arbiter of right. 

When all ahout are sown the dragon's teeth, 

Why twine ye now the olive wreath? 

3. 

Awake freemen — awake! 

Tour own security ye must make; 

Nor hope to ransom health 

With that unequaled wealth 

Te have amassed. 

Unless your gold is cast 

In finely tempered arms, 

And your youthful brawn 

Is universally drawn 

Upon to wield them in the strife 

Of international life. 



4. 



Awake freemen — awake! 
Fear not upon yourselves to take 
The burden of the State's defense- 
In freedom find the recompense 
For manhood's sacrifice. 

2 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

Let every citizen a warrior he, 

And every soldier, free 

When trained, remain a citizen: 

Give no man choice to shirk 

The nation's sternest work. 

The unvarying price 

Of peace is Mood and toil: 

In these for flag and home and soil 

Prepare the race to pay — 

As in the past — again to-day! 

5. 

Awake freemen — awake! 

With peace at stake 

And liberty, will ye slumher 

On forever, unconscious under 

This spell of lies and sloth? 

Go forth 

Like men. Abandon sordid ease! 

Gird on the sword, and seize 

Each in his hand a spear. 

Be every citizen a volunteer 

At heart. 

Do each his part. 

6. 

Awake freemen — awake! 
The world's foundations quake! 

3 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

When all is lost 

Too late to count the cost, 

Or then appease 

The insatiate maw 

Of war, 

'Tis now the Bepuhlic calls 

In time of peace for strong-armed men. 

The need is great — no false alarms 

Are these. 

Ye are hut servile thralls 

Of ease 

"Who fail to answer when 

The nation's trumpet sounds to arms! 

J, G. W, 



CHAPTEE I 



INTKODUCTOEY 



THE object of tlie author in writing this 
book was to place before his readers in 
simple and collected form, side by side, the facts 
connected with the development of the national 
army system which exists in all European 
countries, and those which explain the origin 
and persistence of the volunteer mercenary 
army system which is retained in the United 
States alone. 

A close analysis of those facts has been at- 
tempted whenever such a course would empha- 
size the unwarranted nature of the American 
prejudice against a peace army, and the illogi- 
cal retention by the American people of the 
mercenary system in the mistaken belief that 
universal compulsory service is an undemo- 
cratic institution. It has been attempted to 
show that such a system is not only highly 
democratic in conception and in its practical 

5 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

working, but that the cherished volunteer mer- 
cenary system is undemocratic both in origin 
and effect. 

The claims asserted in favor of universal 
compulsory military service as the only proper 
basis of a truly national army may seem sub- 
ject to general condemnation on the ground that 
the more efficient an army, the more likely it 
is to be misused. This is a purely pacifist argu- 
ment with which this study has nothing to do. 
Commencing our study with the assumption 
that an army is necessary, our purpose is solely 
that of determining the best system for its or- 
ganization and maintenance. Because high- 
powered locomotives are given to derailment on 
occasions, we must not revert to the use of 
stage coaches and canal boats for transporta- 
tion purposes. Neither should we employ ob- 
solete and inefficient means for defense because 
the highly improbable prostitution of a popular 
military institution, adequate to our national 
needs, would be more harmful in its conse- 
quences than the abuse and misapplication of an 
inadequate system of defense. 

Where a national conviction rests upon a 
basis of ignorance and prejudice, it cannot 
prove very resistant to the undermining proc- 

6 



INTRODUCTORY 

ess of logic. Castles do not stand firmly upon 
foundations of sand. A false philosophy mnst 
crumble beneath the battering ram of truth, and 
it remains to the statesmen, publicists and schol- 
ars of America to direct their irresistible blows 
upon the popular prejudice of the American 
people which has become so firmly entrenched 
in their minds. 

Our military men have long since seen the 
light of truth. They have vainly sought to 
shed that light upon their fellow citizens. The 
very prejudice which they have sought to dis- 
sipate has itself been the principal obstacle to 
their success. Civilians are not receptive of 
advice from soldiers — their viewpoint is totally 
different from that of the military man. They 
will act upon the counsel of an editor or an 
orator, be he the veriest tyro in his knowledge, 
but not upon that of a faithful soldier in any 
matter which involves the popular interest. 
Thus have they frequently subjected themselves 
to the hard necessity of being constrained by 
force in crises to heed the superior wisdom of 
military men in military matters. 

It is as much the duty of statesmen to perfect 
their knowledge of the correct principles of 
national defense as it is that of military chief- 

7 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

tains. The persistent neglect of this duty by 
the popular leaders of America is the reason for 
the lack of sympathy existing between the 
people and the army. The estrangement is 
due entirely to a lack of community of thought 
among their representatives. Our soldiers re- 
gard a knowledge of civics as part of their 
education — few of our so-called statesmen 
trouble themselves with a scientific solution of 
the problem of national defense. The latter 
prefer to accept their ancient Bill of Rights as 
the leading text of defensive science. Thus 
they fail to prog:ress, and adhere rigidly to a 
false conclusion based on a correct principle. 
That principle is as true to-day as when enunci- 
ated by the English people in 1688 — the people 
must comprise their own defense. The infer- 
ence that when efficiently organized they con- 
stitute a threat to their own security is utterly 
false. The standing armies that were so justly 
feared by our British forefathers were not 
comprised of the body politic; they were not 
comprised of the national aggregates and im- 
bued with a nationalistic spirit of patriotism; 
they were constituted either by un-national mer- 
cenaries, or by citizens denationalized in inter- 
est under the mercenary system of their em- 

8 



INTRODUCTORY 

ployment. And then we must remember that 
the nndisciplined citizens of to-day are in no 
sense comparable as soldiers with the miles or 
militiaman of early days when all men were 
trained in the nse of arms in the school of neces- 
sity, or were familiar with their use. The 
ancient militia very much more nearly ap- 
proached the organized soldiery in military ca- 
pacity than do the citizens of to-day. Formerly 
the difference between them was in no sense 
physical; the hard-working yokel was fre- 
quently superior in physical constitution to the 
indolent and luxurious man-at-arms. The dif- 
ference was solely one of organization from 
which disciplined action resulted. To-day the 
difference lies in a complete unfamiliarity on 
the part of the militiaman with arms, wood- 
craft, field conditions, and in his inferior physi- 
cal development as well. 

In view of the foregoing comparative analy- 
sis we should be better prepared to separate 
the wheat from the tares that have grown up 
in our political philosophy. 

As we pursue our study we shall see that the 
institution of a national army based on univer- 
sal compulsory military service accords well 
with the system of citizen soldiery favored by 

9 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

the Bill of Rights, and that of the two — national 
and volunteer^ — the mercenary army which we 
now maintain in time of peace is the more 
closely related to the standing army condemned 
in that great popular writ. And the conclu- 
sion will not seem forced that in order to pre- 
serve the defense of the country to the citizens 
as their exclusive right under the constitution, 
it will be necessary to establish a true relation 
between the citizen soldiery of to-day and the 
militia of the eighteenth century. This, in 
view of the deterioration of civilians in mili- 
tary capacity, by reason of a complete revolu- 
tion in the social and economic conditions sur- 
rounding them, can only be accomplished by 
subjecting portions of them at a time to organ- 
ized training in time of peace. Government 
must do that which nature formerly did. The 
altered conditions necessitate a change of 
method in order to insure the old results. Gov- 
ernment can only render the universal liability 
to military service of American citizens effec- 
tive, by preparing them to meet their obliga- 
tions. When universal training is given the en- 
tire body of the freemen of a nation by annual 
drafts, in time of peace, not under the com- 
pulsion of national spirit, but under the com- 

10 



INTRODUCTORY 

pulsion of constitutional law, the system is that 
of universal compulsory service, and the re- 
sulting efficient and democratic army is known 
as a National Army — representative of the mili- 
tary institution in its noblest form. It is such 
an army that the United States must have. 

At this time, when all men's minds dwell upon 
the problem of insuring their national security, 
whether by defensive armaments or by the 
methods proposed by the pacifists, it is well to 
consider that system of defense which has been 
universally adopted as best, except by the 
United States. This is the system of compul- 
sory military service under which military ser- 
vice is justly deemed an obligatory right of the 
citizen or subject. 

Whether a man be regarded as the vassal of 
his sovereign, as in Eussia, and other absolutist 
States, whether he be deemed a mere creature 
of the State or political atom, as in Germany 
and Austria-Hungary, or whether government 
is viewed as the agent of the people, as in the 
United States and other democracies, it is con- 
ceded that in return for the allegiance and sup- 
port of the citizen or subject, the State owes him 
protection for his life and property, at home 
and abroad. The claim of his right to pursue 

11 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

happiness may be denied — Ms right to protec- 
tion is always acceded. The idea was strik- 
ingly expressed by the great democrat, Cal- 
houn, when he declared that ^^ Government is 
Protection," a declaration couched in terms 
alike acceptable to Tzar and President, King 
and peasant. Pope and Puritan, the rich and 
the pauper, the learned and the ignorant. And 
here it may be said that no State, however lib- 
eral, however harsh its government may have 
been, has long survived when the principle, 
so aptly expressed by Calhoun, has failed to 
be regarded by those in power as a funda- 
mental concept of government. 

But while that principle has ever been firmly 
engrafted upon successful governments, what- 
ever their nature, the systems by which na- 
tional protection has been secured, have varied. 
Beginning with the ancient democratic con- 
cept that with manhood suffrage went hand 
in hand the manhood obligation of military ser- 
vice, the protective system degenerated into one 
which imposed no obligation upon the freeman, 
leaving the national defense to the ruler and 
his hireling soldiery, reenforced betimes by 
levies of unwilling conscripts from among his 
subjects. 

12 



INTRODUCTORY 

The period in wMcli the mercenary and con- 
scriptive system was in vogue was a degenerate 
one, and of the prevailing degeneracy of the 
times, the system was itself the best evidence. 
It could only have been generally tolerated un- 
der a careless regard for the national welfare, 
or by reason of a complete misconception of the 
nobility of personal service in defense of home 
and country. 

It is not necessary to accept the philosophy 
of Treitschke in toto in order to concede the 
accuracy of some of his conclusions. Espe- 
cially sound were his views on national de- 
fense. Wrote he : 

** Under ordinary circumstances the right to 
bear arms must always be looked upon as the 
privilege of a free man. It was only during 
the last period of the Roman Empire that the 
system of keeping mercenaries was adopted. 
And, as mercenary troops consisted, except for 
their officers, of the lowest dregs of society, 
the idea soon became prevalent that military 
service was a disgrace, and the free citizen be- 
gan to show himself anxious not to take part in 
it. This conception of the mercenary system 
has gone on perpetuating itself through the 

13 



THE CALL OF THE EEPUBLIC 

ages, and its after effects have been strik- 
ingly demonstrated even in our own day. 
Our century has been called on to witness, 
in the formation of the national and civil 
guards, the most immoral and unreasonable de- 
velopments of w^hich the military system is 
capable. The citizens imagined themselves too 
good to bear arms against the enemies of their 
country, but they were not averse to playing 
as soldiers at home, and even to being able to 
defend their purse if it should happen to be in 
danger. ' ' 

Treitschke's strictures are always harsh, and 
often, as in this instance, only too true, for the 
release of the able-bodied citizen in peace time 
from his inherent obligation to his State and 
his weaker fellows, by the substitution of a 
permanent mercenary force for the citizen 
soldiery, has invariably tended to lower his re- 
spect for his military obligations and, there- 
fore, to render him less willing to make a sacri- 
fice for his country when his services are im- 
peratively needed. From being regarded as a 
privilege, the right of bearing arms soon be- 
comes, under the vicious mercenary system, a 
burden upon the citizen. By that system his 

14 



INTRODUCTORY 

patriotism is deadened — Ms love of country is 
weakened along with his good right arm. And 
so writes Treitschke: 

^^The right to bear arms will ever remain 
the honorary privilege of the free man. All 
noble minds have more or less recognized the 
truth that 'The God who created iron did not 
wish men to be thralls.' And it is the task of 
all reasonable political systems to keep this 
idea in honor.'' 



15 



CHAPTER II 

THE ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MILITARY SYSTEMS 

THE development of the system of com- 
pulsory military service in Europe must 
be traced from its origin among the democratic 
peoples of ancient times. In tracing the history 
of the system one must be forcefully impressed 
by the fact that its roots were bedded in the 
soil of democracy and that it has ever been re- 
garded in Europe as a distinctly popular insti- 
tution as opposed to the mercenary system of 
service. One must also be struck by the fact 
that in countries with an autocratic form of 
government, universal compulsory military ser- 
vice has been regarded as a popular institution, 
and that in England and America, which coun- 
tries have ever boasted a comparatively free 
government, the institution of a national army 
has been deemed to be the instrument of au- 
:ocracy. 
In Egypt, whence came no small measure of 

16 



MEDIEVAL MILITARY SYSTEMS 

the culture of ancient Europe, military service 
was conferred as a privilege upon a certain 
class, and a property qualification was imposed 
upon every man intrusted with the defense of 
his country. Even the common soldier must 
possess not less than six acres of land, which 
served for the support of his family, and which 
were free from taxation. 

In Greece the soldiers were also chiefly free 
citizens, who were early trained to arms and, 
after attaining a prescribed age, were subject 
to actual service in war. Those who had 
reached the age of forty were released from 
service, except in cases of very urgent danger. 
Some were also wholly or temporarily exempted 
on account of their office or employment. 
Originally the warriors maintained themselves, 
and every free citizen deemed it a dishonor to 
serve for pay. But the tendency of the soldiers 
to claim the right of pillage led to the system 
of stated remuneration. 

Rome admitted no soldiers to her army un- 
der seventeen years of age, and all men be- 
tween seventeen and forty-five years were en- 
rolled among the class of younger men, and 
were held liable to service, while those over 
forty-five were ranked among the elder men 

17 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

and exempted from military duty. The legal 
term of service varied among the arms from 
ten to sixteen years. In protracted wars four 
years were sometimes added to the customary 
term, and under the Emperors twenty years 
of service was required. Enrolled citizens for- 
feited their property and liberty for failure to 
respond to the call to arms. Persons without 
property were not enrolled as soldiers, for, hav- 
ing nothing to lose, they were accounted devoid 
of patriotism. As all soldiers were Roman 
citizens and free born, military service was 
held in high esteem, and soldiers were accorded 
peculiar rights and privileges. Until about 400 
B. C. soldiers received no pay. From that time 
on pay was given and gradually increased. 

The prevailing conceptions of military ser- 
vice in Egypt, Greece and Rome were distinctly 
democratic. Nowhere is to be found a sugges- 
tion of the idea that military service is degrad- 
ing and beneath the dignity of a freeman, or to 
be shunned by the citizen. The ancients jeal- 
ously prized their military institutions as pecu- 
liarly worthy of the citizens' favor and respect. 
They saw in the military service of their coun- 
try an exemplification of patriotism — a mani- 
festation of civic sincerity by personal sacrifice 

18 



MEDIEVAL MILITARY SYSTEMS 

on the part of the citizens, and not content with 
an oath of loyalty alone as a qualification for 
this service, they debarred from the honor of 
participating therein all those whose material 
interests were not such as to comprise an as- 
surance of faithful discharge of duty. 

To a Eoman or to a Greek, it would have 
seemed inconceivable that enlightened men 
could surrender the national defense to those 
who might volunteer from selfish motives, or 
worse, merely to earn a livelihood. Military 
service was associated in their minds with the 
ideal of the higher duty of man, and to preserve 
that ideal they took care to see that it was not 
debased by entrusting its preservation to public 
hirelings. This was a conception of military 
service that vanished with many other enlight- 
ened ideas upon the advent of that dark age 
which spread its impenetrable gloom over the 
unformed peoples of Northern and Central 
Europe and obscured for centuries the culture 
of the southern races. 

The invasions of the Barbarians destroyed 
the noble military ideals of Rome; organized 
national military systems disappeared in 
Europe. For many centuries armies had no 
other basis than that of feudal constitution. 

19 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

The feudal system compelled Sovereigns to 
rely upon temporary assemblages of men, un- 
trained, undisciplined, and wholly lacking in 
coordination. The Crusades did much to de- 
velop the idea of cooperation between small 
military units combined for common action, 
and in these great military enterprises may be 
found the origin of larger permanent armed 
forces than had been employed before. 

Under the feudal system Sovereigns were 
completely at the mercy of their vassal lords. 
Li order to free themselves from this uncer- 
tain dependence, as soon as their means war- 
ranted it they began to constitute their own 
armed forces. To accomplish this they were 
compelled to resort to the mercenary system 
under which volunteers in their service received 
compensation. To facilitate the raising of 
armies sovereigns were obliged to employ 
agents, usually officers of credit and renown, 
who, having been engaged in the military pro- 
fession from early life, were acquainted with 
many men able to aid them and willing to 
share their fortunes. Each of these had their 
clients, and regiments were furnished by them 
under contract and competition. Such a sys- 
tem could not have flourished had the fighting 

20 



MEDIEVAL MILITARY SYSTEMS 

men of the day not been desperately poor and 
willing to shed their blood in quest of a happier 
lot than befell them in civil life. The motive 
of these mercenaries was not the purpose of 
fulfilling a duty toward their Sovereign, of de- 
fending their country and gaining the glorious 
reward of public esteem. Soldiers and cap- 
tains alike craved riches and served with no 
other reward in view. The system was a de- 
generating one, and the purely mercenary in- 
stincts of the hired soldiery made them danger- 
ous to employer and enemy alike, for with them 
it was simply a question of where lay the best 
pay. They would fight bravely until paid not 
to do so! Small wonder that the dregs of 
society were arrayed beneath the banners of 
contending sovereigns as the last resort for 
their subsistence, and that civilians came to re- 
gard professional soldiers with contempt. 

The invention of gun powder brought about 
a complete revolution in the military system of 
Europe. The art of war now became a science ; 
the skillful and not the merely brave man was 
henceforth to win the victories. But it took 
long practice to make men skillful with fire 
arms, and warfare could be waged successfully 
only by experienced troops. Even in peace, 

21 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

therefore, it became necessary for sovereigns 
to maintain standing armies. 

About the middle of the fourteenth century 
Okran, son and successor of Othman, the 
founder of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, or- 
ganized a special corps of picked troops known 
as janizaries and composed largely of Chris- 
tians. This corps was greatly improved by 
Amurath I. about 1360, and increased in 
strength to 12,000 men. It soon became the bul- 
wark of the Empire, and, like the Roman Pre- 
torians and Russian Streltsi, a dictatorial 
power. It was a body of warriors notable for 
their efficiency, and this efficiency was seen of all 
to be not alone due to the fierce character of 
its members but to organization and training 
as well. 

The first organization of a standing army in 
Europe was effected by Charles VII. of France, 
in 1445, and he was supported in his costly en- 
terprise by the towns and provinces. The 
soldiers were mercenaries, but had the virtue 
of being permanently employed in time of peace, 
not only for training but as national police. 
Commerce began to prosper in France under 
the orderly reign which ensued, traveling be- 
came safe, and the merchant and husbandman 

22 



MEDIEVAL MILITARY SYSTEMS 

could thenceforth attend securely to their busi- 
ness without fear of being robbed of their 
goods, horses, and cattle by predatory bands. 
From this return to civilization dates the de- 
cline of chivalry. The large body of regular, 
disciplined troops which Charles VII. main- 
tained when there was scarcely a single com- 
pany permanently under arms elsewhere, gave 
France such superiority over her neighbors 
that in self-defense they were obliged to follow 
her example. Henceforth, in Europe, standing 
armies of regularly employed and trained 
troops became the general order of the day. 

The Swiss mercenaries were in great demand 
among the rulers of Europe during the middle 
ages, because of their superior military quali- 
ties, and were to be found in the standing armies 
of almost every State. The increasing popu- 
larity of the regular mercenary system when 
reduced to order soon caused voluntary patri- 
otic service to cease altogether except in Eng- 
land, and it was only there that the old practice 
of calling out quotas of unskilled fighting men 
was adhered to. The mercenary was, there- 
fore, in a sense, the liberator of the masses 
from enforced military service, except in time 

23 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

of serious war. In their freedom the people 
tasted the sweets of peaceful pursuits and for 
a while were well satisfied to pay for the sup- 
port of the military professional. 



24 



CHAPTER III 

OEIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN 
NATIONAL. AEMY 

SATISFACTION with the purely mercenary 
system was short lived. In peace it was 
not without its advantages as the foreign hire- 
lings proved fairly efficient as national police. 
The objections to a standing army of foreign 
soldiery for a while seemed to be counterbal- 
anced by the advantage to the people accruing 
from their own release from military service. 
But as dependence upon such troops became 
more general in war as well as in peace, dis- 
trust of them spread rapidly. The danger of 
intrusting the safety of the State to foreign 
mercenaries, reinforced by the lowest caste of 
national society, became apparent to all men, 
and this perception induced a reaction of sen- 
timent. 

It was the sentiment inducing this reaction 
that inspired Bacon in the composition of his 

25 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

famous essay on war in which he wrote: 
^^ Walled towns, stored arsenals and armories, 
goodly races of horse, chariots of war, ele- 
phants, ordnance, artillery, and the like; all 
this is but a sheep in a lion's skin, except the 
breed and disposition of the people be stout 
and warlike." And then he added: ^^There- 
fore, let any prince or State think soberly of 
his forces, except his militia of natives be of 
good and valiant soldiers. And let princes on 
the other side, that have subjects of martial 
disposition, know their own strength, unless 
they be otherwise wanting unto themselves. 
As for mercenary forces, which is the help in 
this case, all examples shew that whatsoever 
estate or prince doth rest upon them, he may 
spread his feathers for a time, but will mew 
them soon after.'' 

The advice of Bacon was sound, and no doubt 
did much to confirm the English people in their 
prejudices against the mercenary armies of 
Europe and in their faith in their ancient militia 
institution. Its force was also perceived in 
Europe where the subsequent development was 
strikingly different, however, from that in 
Britain. 

England, we shall see, rigidly adhered to the 

26 



ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARMY 

ancient system of the untrained Saxon fyrdj 
under which system all men were compelled to 
render military service at call. In Europe the 
conception that all men were liable for military 
service also prevailed, but a new development 
set in leading to a trained standing army based 
on compulsory service with exemptions to cer- 
tain classes or upon certain conditions. 

Sweden was the first country in Europe that 
built up a regular, and at the same time a 
strictly national, military organization. The 
small standing armies had hitherto been purely 
mercenary and had served in peace as a gen- 
darmerie or species of guard of honor to the 
King. In case of war additional troops had 
to be raised by conscription, or under a rude 
militia system, by voluntary or press gang en- 
listments, or by the purchase of more mercen- 
aries. 

As early as the sixteenth century the Vasa 
kings of Sweden laid the foundation of a na- 
tional regular army, and it remained for Gus- 
tavus Adolphus to perfect it. It consisted of 
a given number of regular troops, raised, paid, 
fed and equipped by the State, and back of 
these stood a militia kept up by the people. 
The regulars of men constantly with the colors 

27 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

were intended for wars outside the national ter- 
ritory ; the militia for the defense of the father- 
land. The regulars were kept at full strength 
by drafts from the militia. Service was based 
as in ancient Egypt on land tenure, and all able- 
bodied males from fifteen years up were liable 
thereto. Gustavus introduced the novel method 
of assigning to each soldier a certain parcel of 
land sufficient for his support and equipment. 

After Sweden, France was the first country, 
under the leadership of Lonvois, the great war 
minister of Louis XIV., to found a permanent 
national force. Then followed Brandenburg 
under the Great Elector, in turn followed by the 
other States of Europe. After this revolution 
in the military systems of Europe all the men 
with the colors were not disbanded at the close 
of any given war. 

Before the close of the seventeenth century 
the people of Europe had virtually reshoul- 
dered the obligation of military service in time 
of peace. 

In practice, however, the peace armies were 
largely composed of volunteers, and the people 
were more or less free to serve with the colors, 
or follow peaceful pursuits as they saw fit. 
Economic and social conditions, rather than 

28 



ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARMY 

laws, compelled an increasing number of them 
to seek military service in time of peace. Le- 
gal compulsion was not necessary, nor was uni- 
versal service rigidly enforced in time of war, 
though all were liable. 

The military system of Frederick the Great 
more nearly approached universal compulsory 
service than any before the French Revolu- 
tion. But Frederick's system was very differ- 
ent from that of modern Prussia, and plainly 
less defensible than the modern voluntary sys- 
tem. It is only where compulsion strikes all 
alike, and where exemptions do not discrimi- 
nate between social castes that the system is 
justifiable — otherwise it is chargeable with an 
injustice from which the voluntary system is 
free. That war should be a citizen's chosen 
profession and means of livelihood, may not be 
desirable, but no one but the individual soldier 
can be injured by mercenary service, and so 
long as the mercenary soldier enters no service 
but that of his own country, he devotes himself 
to a worthy career. Conscription with caste 
exemptions, on the other hand, is glaringly un- 
just and oppressive; not only are these ex- 
emptions themselves unjust, but so long as 
they exist it is impossible to put upon any high 

29 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

ground the constrained service of those who 
are non-exempt. It is a mockery to speak of 
the exalted duty of defending one's country 
where this duty is not made universal, or where 
those who do not wish to pay in blood may sat- 
isfy their personal obligation to the State with 
money. Under such a system compulsory ser- 
vice is a shocking tyranny similar to the levy- 
ing of the taille upon the wretched lower classes 
of old France. It was never enforced in a 
country unaccustomed to despotism until 
adopted in the United States in 1863 under the 
Federal Military Draft Law. Moreover, when 
the exemptions extend to whole classes, or are 
purchased with money, those who are com- 
pelled to serve will be required to remain with 
the colors a longer time than if service were uni- 
versal. By serving many years soldiers ac- 
quire the character of a professional caste and 
become distinguished in thought and conduct 
from the rest of the community, even though 
they did not enter the army originally by choice, 
or to make it their profession. 

The army of Frederick was r'^ised in large 
part by conscription; but large classes of per- 
sons, as well as whole towns and districts, were 
exempted. In the main the citizen class was 

30 



ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARMY 

exempt, while the peasantry were subject to 
compulsory service and were too poor to pur- 
chase exemption. So great was the demand for 
men, and so scanty the supply, that a term of 
service extending over twenty years was neces- 
sary. 

What could have been more tyrannical than 
to seize upon the peasant and subject him to 
twenty years of brutal discipline in order that 
he might defend his more fortunate fellows and 
a country in which he was enslaved to their 
luxury? He owed little to his country, less to 
those who enjoyed the comforts of a peaceful 
life and immunity from the risks of war at his 
expense. Such a system, it is evident, rested 
upon ignorance and terrorism. No class of 
people who claimed the fundamental rights of 
freemen could be subjected to such a system. 
Those who to-day would tolerate such an abuse 
of their manhood would not possess the spirit 
requisite for good soldiers. The early Prus- 
sian system was weakest precisely where the 
French and modern system of Prussia is strong- 
est, that is, on the moral side of universal obli- 
gation. 

If Gustavus, Louvois, or Frederick ever 
dreamed of a universal conscription, notwith- 

31 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

standing the fact that all men in Sweden, 
France, and Prussia were in theory liable to 
service, they probably dismissed the idea from 
their minds as hopelessly impracticable; nor 
did Frederick, even in the extremity of the 
Seven Years' War, seriously consider a levee 
en masse. There was no real patriotism in 
Prussia during Frederick's time, no sense of 
the value of national independence, and a sys- 
tem of universal service is only possible where 
national spirit is exceptionally strong. 

It remained for the Democrats of France to 
reestablish the ancient Republican system of 
universal compulsory service. Emperors and 
kings had relied upon imperfect military sys- 
tems, under which, at best, the full strength of 
a nation could not be mobilized. Republican 
France retaught the world that citizens owed 
their flag the full measure of their support, and 
that they could be made to serve in the ranks 
under a properly administered system of na- 
tional conscription. 

The Directory which succeeded the Conven- 
tion in 1798 keenly felt the necessity of more 
effective preparation for war with the national 
enemies. Its armies had become mere beg- 
garly skeletons and the best regiments were en- 

32 



ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARMY 

gaged in the Egyptian and Syrian Campaigns. 
Requisitions failed to furnish the needed re- 
cruits and it was seen that the old revolutionary 
law under which troops had been raised was 
inadequate to the pressing needs of the State. 
Appealing direct to the military experts for 
new proposals for the recruiting of the army, 
General Jourdan presented a plan under which 
all ahle-bodied men between the ages of twenty 
and twenty-five, without distinction as to their 
social conditions, might be subjected to military 
service. Jourdan 's plan was adopted, and the 
famous Conscription Act was passed forthwith. 
The new conscription system of the Directory 
was far less harsh than the old system of re- 
quisitions. It effected one entire generation, 
and by arranging the military population into 
five classes it permitted the calling out suc- 
cessively of the required number of men, leav- 
ing a chance of drawing lots and obtaining sub- 
stitutes. This system has practically been fol- 
lowed in France to this day. It was appropri- 
ately revolutionary at the time of its adoption ; 
it was far more democratic than the preexist- 
ing systems. It completely revolutionized the 
various European military systems, for it 
proved so entirely satisfactory and efficacious 

33 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

that its adoption in principle was enforced upon 
all other States, liberal and autocratic alike. 
A strict and unwavering adherence by France 
to the system of Jourdan has seemingly saved 
the third French Republic. Its adoption has 
also no doubt preserved the democratic institu- 
tions of Great Britain as well — if not the free 
institutions of the whole world for the time be- 
ing. 



34 



CHAPTER IV 

MILITARY SERVICE IN ITS MOST DEMOCRATIC FORM 

AMONG the advantages of a monarchial 
form of government over a government 
of democratic character, is commonly included 
its superior capacity for war, in defense as 
well as offense. Yet, Republican France, un- 
der the national conscriptive system which she 
adopted in 1798, successfully resisted the 
combined assaults of every monarchy in Eu- 
rope until conscription had drawn to the col- 
ors her last able-bodied man, and no others 
remained to defend the Republic. Fate willed 
it that the French should succumb to the very 
institution which they themselves created — mili- 
tary conscription in the hands of Prussia. This 
is not fancy but fact, for who shall deny that 
Bluecher and Gneisenau determined the down- 
fall of Buonaparte in 1815 through the medium 
of Prussia's regenerated power which was 
thrown in the balance of the Emperor's fate? 

35 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

And who shall deny that the French hope of 
world dominion was cast down in the nineteenth 
century by the regenerated military power of 
Europe through conscription, as has been that 
of the HohenzoUern a century later by conscrip- 
tion in Great Britain? 

So pregnant with power has been the exten- 
sion of the system of national conscription, 
originated by the French and perfected by the 
Prussians, that this great defensive institution 
should be fully traced in its development and 
analyzed in its effects. 

Ghistavus made all able-bodied men effec- 
tively available for military service. The 
French Republic compelled all men of certain 
classes actually to serve with the colors. But 
it was in Prussia that the opportunity presented 
itself of realizing what elsewhere would have 
seemed a mere pedantic chimera, — the complete 
revival of the citizen armies of antiquity. 
There, as nowhere else, conditions were ripe 
for the reestablishment of a national army in 
its best form, for the Prussian mind had be- 
come gradually familiar with conscription and 
was in 1806 prepared by adversity to endure a 
just application of the principle of universal 
service. 

36 



MILITARY SERVICE IN DEMOCRATIC FORM 

To Gerhard Johann David Von Scharnhorst 
belongs the credit for devising the machinery 
to operate the new system. This remarkable 
soldier was born in Hanover in 1755. Entering 
the military service of his native State, he be- 
came a teacher in the artillery school of Han- 
over about 1780 and in that capacity found op- 
portunity to devote himself to research and re- 
flection. His assiduous studies were inter- 
rupted when he was called upon to serve in the 
Campaigns in Flanders from 1793 to 1795, but 
in 1801 he was appointed director of the mili- 
tary school of Prussia, and later served through 
the disastrous Prussian Campaigns of 1806-7. 
After the crushing defeat of Prussia by Napo- 
leon, Scharnhorst, with the rank of general, was 
placed at the head of the War Department and 
made president of the commission charged with 
the reorganization of the Prussian army. 
Working in harmony with Stein, Hardenberg, 
Gneisenau, and other regenerators of Prussia's 
fallen power, he did much to restore the for- 
tunes of his adopted country, devising, among 
other things, the modern system of universal 
compulsory military service. 

Scharnhorst possessed the genius requisite 
not alone for great thoughts but for the execu- 

37 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

tion of Ms ideas. He had that mastery of 
means and detail which is seldom found in con- 
junction with large political conceptions, but, 
which when it does exist, adapts ideas to the 
practical working of a State, instead of allow- 
ing them to die a melodious death in the ora- 
tory of petty politicians. In spite of the popu- 
lar ridicule which Scharnhorst's conception of 
a citizen army subjected him to, in spite of the 
adverse criticism which his plan elicited from 
many of his professional contemporaries, he 
persevered and gradually won over such men 
as Stein, Hardenberg, Yorck, and Gneisenau 
to the loyal and successful support of his 
revolutionary proposals. Such was the dis- 
trust of and bigoted opposition to the system 
proposed by Scharnhorst that universal ser- 
vice was not actually enforced until after his 
death, but he laid down the principles and pre- 
pared the way for its final adoption. 

The enrollment of foreigners in the Prussian 
Army was abolished, the corporal punishments 
of Frederick limited to flagrant cases of indis- 
cipline, promotion for merit was established, 
and military administration organized and sim- 
plified. The organization of the Landwehr 
and Landsturm was begun, and so promptly 

38 



MILITARY SERVICE IN DEMOCRATIC FORM 

effective became the new system that a State 
whose army had failed utterly at Jena was 
able to play an important role, by means of its 
reorganized army under Bluecher and Gneise- 
nau, in the overthrow of Napoleon in 1815, 
within two years after Scharnhorst's death. 



39 



CHAPTER V 

THE ENGLISH IDEAL OF VOLUNTARY SERVICE 

IT is, as we have seen, a notable fact that 
national armies, composed of the entire 
body of citizens, had their origin among ancient 
democratic peoples who feared to entrust the 
safety of their free institutions to the hands 
of any but the citizens. And yet to-day the 
mercenary system remains in effect in but one 
country in the civilized world, and that coun- 
try is the greatest democracy of all times. It 
is natural that we should here inquire as to the 
reason for this anomaly. In order to arrive 
at a full understanding of the causes underly- 
ing the American attitude it is necessary to re- 
view the history of British military institutions. 
In a previous work the writer endeavored to 
explain this anomaly by tracing the origin and 
growth of a racial prejudice among the Anglo- 
Saxons against standing armies.* It will now 

* Empire and Armament. 

40 



ENGLISH IDEAL OP VOLUNTARY SERVICE 

be attempted to show more fully that the seed 
of this prejudice was sown in a soil peculiar to 
England by reason of the social conditions of 
that insulated State. 

The right to bear arms was inherent in the 
English people; in fact, under the earliest laws 
they were compelled to bear arms in the militia 
or localized military forces. 

The British Militia system originated in the 
Anglo-Saxon fyrd and in the warlike features 
of the posse comitatus. Alfred the Great is 
supposed to have created the fyrd, later called 
militia from the Latin miles, meaning a soldier. 
Under the old English institution of villein 
socage land-rents were paid by body service in 
the fyrd, the able-bodied men of each family 
bearing arms in numbers proportionate to the 
land held by the family. The country was or- 
ganized into earldoms, hundreds, tillings (ten 
tillings making the hundred), and families. 
The earls, thanes, and inferior dignitaries of 
State were entitled to certain military service 
from the villeins or serfs attached to the land, 
as well as the king, so that the really necessary 
military burden was multiplied many times. 
The common people, comprised of the freemen 
and villeins, willing enough to respond for ser- 

41 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

vice when danger actually threatened them, 
chafed under the system in time of peace, and 
regarded military service at such a time as an 
evil and unnecessary interference with their 
civil pursuits. The thanes, however, had no 
real interest in the private pursuits of their 
people. So long as they received their due 
they were satisfied. Hence, there existed a 
very natural conflict between a class devoted to 
civil pursuits and a ruling caste which main- 
tained its dignity at the expense of that class. 
Military service in time of peace was the bone of 
contention. Thus did the common people of 
England acquire at an early day a racial prej- 
udice against peace armies or what are now 
called standing armies. 

After the decisive defeat of Harold at Hast- 
ings in 1066, the old Saxon institution of the 
fyrd ceased to exist officially. A new system 
of laws was imposed upon the people, and that 
system, known as the feudal system of the Nor- 
man conquerors, embodied a military institu- 
tion far more oppressive to the common people 
than had been the system of villein socage. 
They became, in fact, no more than slaves of a 
military order, and for long the oppressed Sax- 
ons struggled to keep alive the fyrd as the pref- 

42 



ENGLISH IDEAL OF VOLUNTARY SERVICE 

erable of two evils. An institution, which had 
itself been unpopular, the people now cherished 
in their memory. In contrast with the new 
order it seemed decidedly liberal and compara- 
tively free from the objections of the feudal 
system. The representatives of the new mili- 
tary institution were soldiers from birth; and 
being the oppressors of a vassal people, they 
brought disrepute upon the military profession 
in the minds of the lower classes. 

Most of the lighting in which the common 
people of England were called upon to engage 
during the Middle Ages was distinctly intra- 
national or internal in character, and even when 
a king summoned his military chieftains to 
assemble their feudatories for a war against the 
so-called national enemy, the cause of conflict 
was, more often than not, one in which the 
people had little real interest ; it was at best an 
unpopular cause. The military vassals were 
primarily plain civilians — their welfare lay in 
peace. The military service they were called 
upon to render their feudal lords became a bur- 
den by reason of its frequency, and the utter 
lack of personal interest among the fighting 
men in the petty quarrels of their leaders. 
There was nothing in such service to appeal to 

43 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

the patriotism of the people — only hardships 
rewarded them for their service. But the Brit- 
ish subject was required to pay his rent with 
his *^ sword and buckler/' and when the land- 
lord called for the use of the vassaPs good right 
arm, with a curse and a groan the plow was 
left in the furrow. 

It was not long before the feudal system re- 
acted upon those who benefited most from it. 
The feudal barons, who, in their petty, internal 
struggles, laid such a heavy burden upon their 
vassals, were in turn required with increasing 
frequency to support their king in war. The 
same complaint which the people made against 
the barons, the barons now began to make 
against the king. So long as military service 
was restricted to their own selfish ends, well 
and good, but they strenuously resisted the de- 
mands of the overlord. Objecting as they did 
at an early day to being led out of the King- 
dom, it was King John's insistence upon for- 
eign service that led to Runnymede. 

Feudalism, so inseparably associated with 
military power in the minds of the people, was 
in its very nature destructive of human liberty. 

The possession of military power by irrespon- 
sible barons was an incitement to its use by 

44 



ENGLISH IDEAL OF VOLUNTARY SERVICE 

them in the settlement of private fends; the 
imperfect subjection of vassals, only slightly 
less powerful than their lords, led to frequent 
resistance on their part; and the absence of a 
strong central government, resulting from the 
delegation of sovereign rights, diminished the 
power of the nominal ruler to such an extent 
that general order could not be maintained. 
The feudal castle was no more nor less than an 
armory — a seat of military power — and though 
held in the name of the king, it was a base of 
operations to despoil and tyrannize over the 
surrounding country. The banner that floated 
from its embattled walls embodied no hope or 
aspiration of the lowly who watched it from 
their squalid huts — to them it was but the sym- 
bol of oppression. The flag they were called 
upon to serve aroused no lofty sentiments in 
their breasts, nor was the chieftain ^s standard 
in any sense emblematic of that protection in 
token of which a national flag is now designed. 
With the advent of the thirteenth century new 
institutions began to evolve and found them- 
selves everywhere repressed by feudalism. 
Town life, trade, commerce, and a well-to-do 
middle class grew up with the increase of popu- 
lation, and gradually, with the aid of the urban 

45 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

classes, the feudal order was overthrown and 
the old Saxon institution of the militia was re- 
established in improved form. Indeed, the fyrd 
played no small part in the success of the king 
in reducing the feudal barons to submission to 
law and order ; and for that reason the militia 
system was more highly prized than ever by 
the people. 

Although Henry VI. did, in 1449, employ a 
small mercenary force of Italian and German — 
^^Brabazon'' — soldiers, with which to suppress 
Jack Cade, the distrust of a standing army of 
mercenaries was deep-rooted in the British 
soul. Released from military oppression the 
British people, cherishing their inherited prej- 
udices against the old order, resolved never 
more to countenance military domination. Dis- 
taste for permanent military service in every 
form became traditional with the race. 

For three centuries the militia was the sole 
reliance of England for defense. Removed by 
the isolation of the realm from the maelstrom 
of continuous inter-state strife in central Eu- 
rope, the wars of the Continent had no tend- 
ency to evolve in England a greater measure of 
central military power than the militia system 
afforded. In order that they might contend 

46 



ENGLISH IDEAL OF VOLUNTARY SERVICE 

more successfully with their neighbors, and in 
as much as centralized power was essential to 
the existence of their States, the people of 
Europe submitted more or less willingly to the 
process of military centralization. But in Eng- 
land, where frequent encroachments from the 
outside did not intervene to compel the sur- 
render of individual liberties in the common de- 
fense, the democratic spirit prevailed. Indeed, 
not only were the very causes which led the 
people of the Continent to accept military rule 
almost entirely absent, but in England the 
people, arguing from their old experiences, be- 
lieved that the centralization of military power 
could mean for them only a compulsory sur- 
render, without compensatory advantages, of 
self-government. Consequently they retained 
all military power in themselves and relied upon 
the ancient militia system rather than upon a 
trained and permanent army at the beck and 
call of a ruler or caste. 

The repugnance of the English people for a 
standing army is apparent in a long line of con- 
stitutional decisions and statutes of the Realm. 
There are many early statutes protesting 
against the laws of the Forest, and prohibiting 
martial law. 

47 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

James I., autocratic and imperious by na- 
ture, ignored the traditional sentiments of Ms 
people, and undertook to buttress his usurpa- 
tions of authority by the organization of trained 
bands of soldiery. Martial law was reestab- 
lished by him, and with the aid of their mer- 
cenary troops he and his son, Charles I., sub- 
jected their subjects to many military oppres- 
sions. The Petition of Eights forcefully sets 
forth the protests of the English people against 
the tyrannical abuses of the Stuarts. The Eng- 
lishmen viewed with alarm the establishment of 
a standing army in their midst and were quick 
to attribute thereto the evils of which they com- 
plained. Again did a standing army appear to 
them to be the inevitable instrument of tyranny. 
And so they wrote into their Constitutional 
Bill of Rights (A. D. 1689) the following signifi- 
cant clause : 

^^That the raising or keeping a standing 
army, within the Kingdome in time of peace, un- 
less it be with the consent of Parleament, is 
against the law." 

The English Bill of Rights was a national 
writ embodying the experience and the fears 
of a race of free, liberty-loving men. The pro- 
test it promulgated was on the lip of every 

48 



ENGLISH IDEAL OF VOLUNTARY SERVICE 

Briton and has ever remained a warning to 
the would-be usurpers of British popular in- 
stitutions, among which voluntary military 
service was for long cherished as a democratic 
ideal. The misconception as to the democratic 
nature of that ideal has at last been overcome 
— though not without a bitter struggle. 



49 



CHAPTER VI 

THE INHEKITED AMEKICAN IDEAL 

A GREAT migration to the new world oc- 
curred in the seventeenth century, and 
British subjects brought with them their laws, 
their customs, and their prejudices to America. 

The subordination of the military to the civil 
power was quite as much a cardinal principle 
in the British Colonies as it was at home. Win- 
throp relates that when, during the Antinomian 
excitement, it was proposed to incorporate a 
military organization, the magistrates of Bos- 
ton reflected on the example of the Pretorian 
Band among the Romans and recalled the 
Templars of Europe. They thought ^ ' how dan- 
gerous it might be to erect a standing authority 
of military men, which might easily in time 
overthrow the civil power,'' and resolved to 
*'stop it betimes.'' * 

The anxiety of the Colonists was ill-founded, 

* Winthrop, I., 305. 

50 



THE INHERITED AMERICAN IDEAL 

for the industrial forces in colonial society so 
greatly outweighed the military as to effectu- 
ally remove the peril that was feared. It is 
true that all men in the Colonies were soldiers 
of necessity in their struggles with the hostile 
aborigines, and service in the militia at call 
was compulsory, but the compulsion was that 
which the Colonists imposed upon themselves 
in the interest of personal self-defense. They 
never dreamed of vesting with power a mili- 
tary institution beyond their immediate control. 

There were few real soldiers among them. 
A number who had received training in the 
European armies ventured to the Colonies with 
the first settlers, but their successors and the 
great body of their contemporaries never 
gained any military experience save that which 
came from desultory Indian fighting or from 
an occasional muster. Officers and privates 
alike were civilians; they had been husband- 
men, artisans or small traders at home, for 
the most part, drawn from the very stratum of 
society in which the prejudice against pro- 
fessional soldiery was the quickest. 

In the Colonies there was no opportunity for 
the development of a military caste or spirit. 
Indian warfare at best entailed only an oc- 

51 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

casional scout, march, or brief campaign. 
Time for training and service was necessarily 
taken, at considerable cost, from peaceful oc- 
cupations which, if they were to yield even a 
modest livelihood, demanded strenuous applica- 
tion and effort. 
Says Osgood: 

** Families were large, resources were small. 
Population was sparsely distributed. The 
home was often located in places where danger 
lurked, and where the presence of the grown 
men of the household was imperatively needed 
for protection. Fields must be planted and 
harvests gathered at the proper time, or the 
community would immediately suffer want. 
Under these conditions it was impossible for 
the Colonists to do more than organize a mili- 
tia system, which in a more or less crude way 
would meet the need for defense. Military law, 
like all other law, emanated directly or indi- 
rectly from the General Court. The commit- 
tees and administrative boards which controlled 
and directed the equipment of soldiers and di- 
rected their movements consisted in most cases 
of the same men who guided the affairs of the 
colony in civil relations. The officers were in 

52 



THE INHERITED AMERICAN IDEAL 

many cases elected by the men — their neigh- 
bors — whom they commanded, and in all cases 
they derived their authority from an elective 
body. Under these conditions, combined with 
the limited resources both of the soldier and of 
the colonial treasury from which his wages 
were paid, and with the fact that the Com- 
missariat played a very subordinate part in 
the outfitting of a force, explain why it was 
that the military arrangements of the Colonies 
were crude, and their soldiery was unfit for 
long periods of active service/' * 

The system thus outlined sufficed for the 
Colonists, and its adequacy to their needs only 
confirmed them in their inherited prejudices 
against a more permanent and efficient mili- 
tary system. It is true that the early militia 
system was based on the principle of the assize 
of arms, which implied the general obligation 
of all adult males to possess arms, and, with 
certain exceptions, to cooperate in the work of 
defense. But the obligation partook not so 
much of the nature of a cherished privilege as 

* The American Colonies in the 17th Century, Osgood, Vol. I., 
pp. 497, 498. Also see Bruce 's Institutional History of Vir- 
ginia in the 17tli Century. 

53 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

an unavoidable burden. In this duty, as in 
the payment of taxes, the distinction between 
the freeman and the non-freeman almost wholly 
disappeared. There was nothing in the system 
suggestive of universal service as a matter of 
cherished right among freemen. 

The conditions were such, indeed, that serv- 
ice in the common defense was more often than 
not rendered at the expense of the security of 
the individual soldiers^ homes and property. 
The militia system of the Colonies, like the 
feudal system, had no attractions for the com- 
mon man. It could only have intensified the 
Colonists' dislike for all things military, and 
for military organization and discipline in par- 
ticular. These men and their sons established 
the customs of the incipient American States; 
their grandsons won with their blood the inde- 
pendence of those States and drafted their or- 
ganic laws. Into those laws passed the preju- 
dices of British men with the hatred of military 
service firmly imbedded in their souls. Wrote 
George Mason, of Virginia, into the Bill of 
Eights of the first Constitution adopted by an 
American State, nineteen days before the inde- 
pendence of the United Colonies was declared: 

54 



THE INHERITED AMERICAN IDEAL 

^^That a well-regulated militia, composed of 
the body of the people trained to arms, is the 
proper, natural, and safe defense of a free 
State; that standing armies in time of peace 
should be avoided as dangerous to liberty ; and 
that in all cases the military should be under 
strict subordination to, and governed by, the 
civil power/ ^ 

Can it be doubted that Mason had before his 
eyes the English Bill of Rights when he under- 
took to draft the instrument which should em- 
body for all time the constitutional guarantees 
of British-born freemen? 

Thus was reflected that undying prejudice of 
Britons against the maintenance of armies in 
time of peace, only to be emphasized anew by 
Jeiferson, who in his last message to Congress 
declared : 

*^For a people who are free and who mean 
to remain so, a well-organized and armed mili- 
tia is their best defense.'' 

But all British-speaking men were not de- 
luded by their prejudices in favor of the obso- 
lete militia system. Wrote John Dryden in 
satirical vein of the adored citizen soldiery : 

55 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

*'And now in fields the rude militia swarms, 
Mouths without hands, maintain 'd at vast expense, 
In peace a charge, in war a weak defence ; 
Stout once a month they march, a blustering band, 
And ever but in times of need at hand." 

In these lines Dryden but voiced the later 
experience of Washington with militia — the ex- 
perience of every man who has ever been called 
upon to command such troops. 

Wrote Washington to Congress : 

^^To place any dependence upon militia is 
assuredly resting upon a broken staff.'' 

And referring in the same letter to the atti- 
tude of the people of the Colonies towards 
trained troops, he added : 

**The jealousy of a standing army, and the 
evils to be apprehended from one, are remote, 
and, in my judgment, situated and circum- 
stanced as we are, not at all to be dreaded ; but 
the consequences of wanting one, according to 
my ideas, formed from the present view of 
things, is certain and inevitable ruin. For if 
I was called upon to decide upon oath whether 
the militia had been most serviceable or hurt- 
ful, upon the whole I should subscribe to the 
latter view. ' ' 

56 



THE INHERITED AMERICAN IDEAL 

"Washington was a wiser man than Mason or 
Jefferson, nor did prejudice blind his eyes and 
cause him to adopt as justifiable under changed 
conditions the inherited convictions of English- 
men. Mason and Jefferson looked only at the 
English Bill of Rights of 1689, and saw there 
the ancient inhibition against trained soldiery. 
They accepted it as a fact that soldiers are in- 
herently dangerous. Their conclusions were 
not based on any confirmatory experience, but 
were guided solely by the views of men living 
under an ancient order. Washington thought 
for himself, and distinguished in his own mind 
between the hireling mercenaries of a despot, 
who gave rise to the inhibition in the English 
Bill of Rights, and a trained army composed 
of citizens, created and governed by the repre- 
sentatives of a free people. He saw no logical 
analogy between the two, or between the abuses 
of the feudal system of ancient England and 
the conditions likely to obtain in a modern Re- 
public. Mason and Jefferson failed to per- 
ceive that the character of the individuals com- 
prising a standing army might affect its charac- 
ter and its tendencies. Washington well un- 
derstood that the mere fact of adequate train- 
ing to enable citizens to defend themselves 

57 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

against their enemies would not of itself cause 
them to attempt to usurp their own liberties! 
Mason and Jefferson were unwilling to credit 
their fellow citizens with that patriotism and 
love of country which as orators they so fre- 
quently sought to arouse and invoke for the 
common defense. Their mental processes on 
this point were strangely awry, as were the con- 
clusions of those whom they influenced in their 
rigid and unreasoning prejudices against sol- 
diers who, in America, must needs possess a 
common interest with their fellow citizens. 

Mason and Jefferson are in no sense respon- 
sible, as we have seen, for those prejudices. 
Their views were but representative of those 
entertained by ordinary British minds of their 
times. In the constitution of Massachusetts, 
written in 1780, we read that in time of peace 
armies are dangerous to liberty. 

To such a sad plight did adherence to the old 
militia ideal bring the United States in 1814 
that compulsory military service was then 
proposed as the only means of successfully con- 
tending with Great Britain. The framers of 
the proposed law had in mind the efficient new 
military system of Europe and saw in it, as 
Scharnhorst had done in Prussia, the hope of 

58 



THE INHERITED AMERICAN IDEAL 

their country. But the American Democracy, 
led by Webster, tore asunder the wise proposal 
and characterized compulsory military service 
as illegal and unconstitutional, even declaring 
it to be the right of the States to prevent by 
force the execution of such a law. This mis- 
taken attitude on the part of one so powerful 
as Webster only confirmed the American view 
and caused the ancient prejudice to grip the 
people with renewed firmness. They paid no 
heed to Clay, who, with fine disregard of Ameri- 
can prejudice, retorted in answer to those who 
feared to create an adequate army, that he had 
no fear of a standing army even in peace, much 
less in war, and that he did not believe a stand- 
ing army of 25,000 men, even if corrupted by 
ambitious leaders, would be a threat to the free- 
dom of the Republic. And then they read with 
approval, in 1835, Tocqueville's primer of 
democracy in which the author declared that 
''after all, and in spite of all precautions, a 
large army and a democratic people will always 
be a source of great danger; the most effectual 
means of diminishing that danger would be to 
reduce the army. ..." 

Yet, these same people had been compelled 
to resort to conscription in two wars, actually 

59 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

paying the enforced conscripts for serving their 
country under a rigid compulsion ! They seem- 
ingly continued to repose their faith in a vol- 
untary system which had failed in every crisis 
to provide the necessary troops for the na- 
tional defense. 

Population had increased greatly before the 
outbreak of the Mexican War. So few troops 
were required in that war — about 100,000 — ^that 
the voluntary mercenary system was not over- 
taxed. The fact that 73,500 volunteers re- 
sponded to the call of the President seemed to 
establish beyond a doubt the efficacy of the old 
system. ^^The events of these few months af- 
ford a gratifying proof,'' declared President 
Polk, ^Hhat our country can, under any emer- 
gency, confidently rely for the maintenance of 
her honor and the defense of her rights on an 
effective force ready at all times voluntarily to 
relinquish the comforts of home for the perils 
and privations of camp. ' ' And to this he added 
that the ready response proved ^'that our peo- 
ple love their institutions and are ever ready 
to defend and protect them." 

But what would this same President have had 
to say on this point two decades later? 

During the war between the States two dis- 

60 



THE INHERITED AMERICAN IDEAL 

tinct sections of the American people were ar- 
rayed against each other in a life and death 
struggle for existence — such a struggle as has 
always brought a great majority of fighting 
men to the colors. Conditions are such in in- 
ternecine wars that men are under the strongest 
moral compulsion to take up arms. Yet, with 
a total population of approximately thirty-five 
million people, it required a combination of the 
voluntary mercenary, the conscriptive, and the 
bounty systems to bring three million men to 
the colors, of which number one million were 
furnished by the South with a military popula- 
tion of seven million whites. Thus, in the 
South one-seventh, and in the North less than 
one-twelfth of the population was in arms dur- 
ing the whole four years of the war, and never, 
perhaps, more than half this proportion during 
any given year. Conscription had to be 
adopted by the Confederate States in April, 
1862, or at the close of the first year of the 
war, and in the Spring of 1863 by the Federal 
Government. In the United States proper, 
then, it became necessary to resort not only to 
a system of drafting, stoutly maintained by 
many authorities to have been unconstitutional 
in its unjust discriminations in favor of the 

61 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

ricli who were allowed to purchase their exemp- 
tion from service, but the law was most un- 
democratic in nature and repugnant to every 
principle of free government. 

There were many good and honest citizens in 
the Union and Confederate armies. This class 
did not suffice, however, for the national defense 
in the case of either belligerent. The humili- 
ating spectacle was presented to the world of 
peoples loudly partisan in the espousal of 
democracy being compelled to impress by force 
their fellow citizens into the armies of their 
republics and pay them for an enforced service 
which in Europe was, and is, more or less freely 
rendered from a patriotic motive alone. 

The devotion, the loyalty, and the heroic 
deeds of American volunteers, comprise many 
fine chapters of American History. But there 
are many dark pages from which we would fain 
avert our eyes, which recount the selfishness, 
the disloyalty, the unpatriotic attitude of an- 
other and larger class of American citizens in 
the three greatest wars of the Republic. We 
may justly doubt if a great crisis would find 
that class more willing than heretofore to re- 
spond to the nation's call. Has the increased 
ease, the muscular relaxation, the diminishing 

62 



THE INHERITED AMERICAN IDEAL 

homogeneity of the nation, made it easier for 
these men to surrender the luxuries of seden- 
tary life and manfully assume the burden of 
the soldier in the hour of his country's need? 
In answering this question we must not con- 
sider the spirit which would animate the for- 
ward, the strong of heart, those who would 
comprise the first million recruits, untrained 
but willing; the question is — Will the second 
and the third and the fourth and the fifth mil- 
lion harken to the bugle call of the Republic? 



63 



CHAPTER Vn 

THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

WHILE all able-bodied citizens of America 
are liable, under the organic law of the 
United States, for military service in the mili- 
tia, universal liability to military service is a 
mere legal fiction, and there is no obligation 
upon the citizens to receive military training. 
The constitutional provision for universal ser- 
vice has never been even partially enforced. 
The American system is purely a voluntary 
mercenary one in practice, whatever it may be 
in theory. Nor is citizenship a requisite quali- 
fication for service. The system is based on the 
utterly fallacious conception that a citizen of a 
Republic, or a volunteer of foreign birth, should 
be engaged under private contract and paid on 
a scale relatively commensurate with the earn- 
ing capacity of the average citizen of the vol- 
unteer class in private life ; in other words that 
he who elects to serve in defense of his country 

64 



THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

should be rewarded by the government for so 
doing. To the national mind there appears no 
incongruity in the practice of allowing the citi- 
zen to determine the extent of his own obliga- 
tion to the Republic and in his being paid by 
his fellow citizens for defending his own rights. 
The national obtuseness on this point would 
be inexplicable did we not know that the mer- 
cenary system had its origin at a time when 
a more or less complete lack of community of 
interest existed between government and gov- 
erned, sovereign and subjects. 

We have seen that under the Constitution all 
citizens of a specified age are liable to mili- 
tary service. Are we to assume that the defi- 
nite provisions of the Constitution are mean- 
ingless? 

To understand the intent of any law one must 
consider carefully the circumstances attending 
its enactment. When the Constitution was 
drafted a large proportion of our citizens were 
fitted by the life they led to become capable 
soldiers with comparatively little actual train- 
ing. Their struggle with nature hardened their 
bodies and familiarized them with woodcraft 
and firearms. Most of them were horsemen, 
and great numbers of our Colonists were actu- 

65 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

ally frontiersmen and, therefore, soldiers by 
nature. Organization and leadership alone were 
lacking to convert these men into a formidable 
military force. The framers of the Constitu- 
tion, therefore, and the State Legislatures, felt 
that a small standing army which would serve 
as a nucleus for a sudden expansion of the na- 
tional forces, was sufficient to the needs of the 
country, isolated as it was from hostile neigh- 
bors. They believed that time would always be 
available in case of danger in which to develop 
the militia, or citizens, into soldiers. 

The State troops, or semi-organized militia, 
retained by the several Colonies when they be- 
came States of the Union, were but an expres- 
sion of State sovereignty. There was really 
no such thing in 1787 as an American people 
in the present sense. On the contrary there 
were thirteen peoples, each intensely jealous 
of the political power of the other twelve. 
State troops were maintained because it was 
thought prudent by the States that some force 
should stand behind their individual Govern- 
ments, as a protection to the sovereign rights 
of those Grovernments against aggression from 
a foreign enemy, the central Government, or 
any other State government, as the case might 

66 



THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

be. State troops were, in the highest sense of 
the words, but the expression of State sov- 
ereignty. To-day they are a relic of the past. 
They are superfluous as well as illogical, and 
far less efficient, and more expensive for in- 
terior police purposes than State constabula- 
ries. 

Great changes have occurred in the quality 
of the citizen soldiery authorized in the Con- 
stitution, as well as in the early political condi- 
tions which justified the maintenance of State 
troops. That degree of training and fitness 
for instant military service which nature for- 
merly conferred upon the citizens of the United 
States is, under present conditions, almost 
wholly lacking. In order, therefore, to make 
the citizenry of the Nation relatively as com- 
petent for national defense as it was at the 
time the Constitution was adopted, it is incum- 
bent upon the central Government to supply 
by artificial methods that which nature formerly 
provided. If this be not done, the Constitu- 
tional provisions become meaningless and of 
no effect. It was never contemplated by the 
framers of the Constitution that changed con- 
ditions should be allowed to reduce their scheme 
of national defense to a state of ineffectiveness. 

67 



THE CALL OF THE EEPUBLIC 

Had they contemplated an inhibition against 
the actual training of the militia upon which 
the country was to rely, a system of training 
under which nature could be supplemented by 
science, most assuredly they would have em- 
bodied that restriction in the Constitution, or 
in the law of the land. Indeed, the circum- 
stances contemporaneous with the adoption of 
the Constitution seem to indicate that it is the 
present duty of the Federal Government to 
transform the citizenry of the Nation into a 
militia relatively as efficient in a military sense 
as it was in 1787, and to render our citizens 
relatively as efficient, the modern demands of 
military science must be thoroughly considered. 
Under the Constitution itself, the organic law 
of the land, there is no lack whatever of au- 
thority for the establishment of universal com- 
pulsory military service, unless the word mili- 
tia, as used therein, be construed to mean citi- 
zens incapable through lack of natural ability 
and training to do that demanded of them. 
Surely if these citizens are required by the Con- 
stitution to serve in the defense of their coun- 
try, it was expected by the framers of that 
highly logical instrument that they would be 
capable of doing so. That they are not now 

68 



THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

capable of defending their conntry against the 
superior skill of foreign armies, and the highly 
developed military power of other States, will 
become apparent to any thinking man who in- 
telligently examines the facts. Nor can we 
safely rely upon a mercenary system of de- 
fense to make up for the military inefficiency 
of onr citizen soldiery. 

The mercenary system was born of an age 
antecedent to the birth of nationalism, of a pe- 
riod in which there were peoples who acknowl- 
edged common rnlers, but who asserted small 
claim to an ultimate sovereignty in themselves. 
The State was a poorly defined institution, and 
so shadowy was its form that title of popular 
right in the State hardly suggested itself to 
the loosely knit body of the people. Under 
such circumstances it was natural that military 
service should have been regarded more in the 
light of service to the Sovereign than as an ob- 
ligatory duty to themselves through the State 
or body politic. A claim, justly recognized, un- 
der the conditions obtaining when it was first 
asserted, has become invalid under altered cir- 
cumstances. All enlightened peoples have per- 
ceived this fact except the Americans, and they 
alone have failed to grasp the truth simply be- 

69 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

cause their government has not yet been called 
upon to render a degree of protection greater 
than it is capable of doing without the full 
strength of the Nation behind it. 

When States developed to that stage in which 
a true reciprocity between government and na- 
tionals came into being, a community of inter- 
est between the two was perceived to exist. 
The people rendered allegiance to the State be- 
cause the State was better able to protect them 
by its governmental agencies than they were ca- 
pable of defending themselves by individual 
action. It was a firmer allegiance to the State 
that made the State more able to protect its 
nationals. It was an increased community of 
interest among a people, gathered together un- 
der natural or artificial conditions, that caused 
them to render their collective allegiance for 
the common good. Gradually there was sub- 
scribed a contract between rulers and subjects, 
and however fervently the former may have de- 
nied the fact that such a compact existed, na- 
ture had witnessed the agreement and set her 
seal thereupon. 

At first the king regarded his subjects as 
slaves without interest in his estate. He pro- 
vided for the protection of his private estate 

70 



THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

by summoning his slaves to its defense. To en- 
hance their interest in his personal affairs he 
rewarded them by a greater measure of per- 
sonal liberty, then by land grants, and finally 
by pecuniary remuneration. In time the free- 
men's attachment to the land which had been 
given him became so firm that, with his in- 
creased sense of liberty, he disputed over its 
title with his king. The king was after all not 
a divine being and his subjects had become 
numerous ; therefore, the king yielded under a 
compromise settlement in which he consented 
that the freeman should enjoy a joint right with 
him in the land in consideration of their prom- 
ised support and allegiance in defending the 
joint estate. 

If this theory of State and citizen be logical 
and correct, how can a people to-day who hold 
their national estate in fee simple, admitting 
no joint ownership therein with a ruler, justify 
a mercenary system of military service for de- 
fense? If upon the government of a Republic 
there rests the obligation of protecting the life 
and property of the citizen nationals, does not 
the duty of fulfilling that obligation rest wholly 
upon the ultimate sovereign of the State? And 

71 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

who is the Tiltimate sovereign of a Republic but 
the body politic or the people? 

The cold logic of the foregoing analysis is 
recognized by the Constitution of the United 
States in that provision which makes all able- 
bodied men liable to military service. It has 
been completely ignored by the Government 
erected on the foundation of that Constitution, 
and the persistent neglect has been winked at 
by the people because, first, for many years they 
were blinded by a traditional prejudice, now 
happily outlived, and second, because to-day 
their moral and physical muscles have become 
flabby from disuse, or because their luxury and 
wealth would be disturbed by the performance 
of the inconvenient duty of defending them- 
selves! Why trouble to defend themselves in 
this democratic age, as did the Egyptians, the 
Romans, and the Greeks, when mercenaries of 
foreign blood may be hired like the Brabazon 
and Swiss soldiers of the dark ages to bear the 
burden of defense! 

Story, Curtis, Burgess, and other commenta- 
tors on the Constitution have done much to ha- 
bituate the American mind to the idea of a 
standing army, but there are those, even in our 
day, who with the political outlook of a parish 

72 



THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

beadle, liave offset witli oratorical bluster and 
nousensities the intelligent teaching of our le- 
gal scholars. It was but recently that Senator 
Teller profaned the senatorial temple with the 
monstrous caution that ^^the fighting force of 
a repubhc is the great body of the people, and 
not a paid soldiery called regulars. You must 
rely upon the people and not upon an army. 
An army is a vain delusion. It may to-day be 
for you; it may be against you to-morrow.'' 
Thus did this statesman of medieval thought 
aid in misleading the unthinking. Fully two 
centuries behind the times, he resorted to 
ancient rather than modern experience to sub- 
stantiate his glib assertions. Where, let us in- 
quire, can Senator Teller, or any one else, point 
to an example in American history to bear out 
his views'? Did he not know that regular 
troops under Washington, himself a military 
dictator, established the liberties of America'? 
Did he not know that regular troops saved the 
Republic at Bull Eun, and that they have since 
served the nation with unequaled faithfulness? 
The American people profess to cherish their 
constitutional liberties — amendment of their 
Constitution has ordinarily been accomplished 
with great difficulty and in certain instances 

73 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

only by the shedding of much blood. But in 
one great particular the Constitution has been 
silently amended by a gradual decay in the re- 
gard of the people for the democratic institu- 
tion of compulsory militia service. Such ser- 
vice has never been enforced, nor even de- 
manded by the Government, and regular troops 
alone have defended the country in time of 
peace. Indeed, the constitutional militia of the 
States has but recently been converted under 
the Hay Bill into an inadequate and semi-pro- 
fessional army, only partially trained it is true, 
but rewarded for its service by mercenary pay. 
Without the virtues of the militia which it was 
designed by the framers of the Constitution to 
be, with all the weaknesses of an ill-organized 
and untrained standing army, and subject to all 
the defects of the mercenary system, it now ex- 
ists as a monument to the popular liberties that 
have been sacrificed to political misconception 
and prejudice. It is neither a wholly national 
army nor a force belonging wholly to the 
States ; it is not a regular or standing army be- 
cause it is irregular and impermanent ; it is not 
militia, nor is it professional in character. One 
thing only it seems to be — mercenary — ^paid for 
its services by the State on an extravagant 

74 



THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

scale of equality with trained, regular troops. 
The so-called American militia system has been 
developed to a stage of imperfection in which it 
can only serve to victimize the patriotic volun- 
teers who serve under it by rendering them 
hopelessly inefficient as a military force, and to 
victimize the innocent people who have been 
misled into reposing their confidence in it. 

And here it should be remarked that it is not 
the militiaman of America that is at fault. He 
has been subjected too long to the most unjust 
criticism. These same men become efficient in 
the regular army. They themselves are in no 
sense inherently lacking in soldierly qualities. 
It is the system under which they serve that 
renders them hopelessly inefficient until con- 
verted by long service into a standing army. 
The people of America owe their militiamen the 
highest respect for their self-sacrificing service 
under the most adverse conditions — conditions 
well calculated to demoralize seasoned and 
experienced troops. But they should loathe 
and repudiate the system that prevents these 
loyal citizens from serving their country to the 
best of the ability that is in them. Let us tol- 
erate no more criticism of our citizen soldiers, 
for they are but the vicarious sacrifice to ig- 

75 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

norance and prejudice. The specious argument 
that untrained American citizens performed 
prodigies of valor in the war between the States 
is easily disposed of. They did perform valor- 
ous deeds but they only became efficient sol- 
diers in a school of bitter experience. The un- 
trained citizen soldiers of the North were called 
upon to combat the untrained citizen soldiers of 
the South. Both became regular, trained sol- 
diers while fighting against troops of their own 
quality. In the cruel process of training which 
they underwent more of the splendid volunteers 
were sacrificed to military ignorance, far re- 
moved from the conflict, than perished in bat- 
tle. The history of that great struggle is not a 
justification but an unanswerable condemnation 
of the AiQerican military system. The school 
teachers and anti-army people of America 
should read General Emory Upton's epitome of 
the military policy of the United States, the 
former in order that they may instruct aright 
American youth who are now steeped in the 
sentimental prevarications of school histories, 
the latter to the end of personal information 
concerning a subject requiring some slight 
knowledge on the part of those who would 
render the national defense even more precari- 

76 



THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

OTIS than at present, and both for an enlarge- 
ment of the popular understanding of our na- 
tional military problems. 

In America there is a very practical objec- 
tion to the voluntary system in addition to the 
general objections which have already been 
cited. Under the American system profes- 
sional learning and professional training are al- 
most wholly confined to the very small volun- 
teer army. Behind that army stands no avail- 
able trained force for instant service. Conse- 
quently, in the event of a great emergency re- 
quiring so small an army to bear the first shock 
of war, the casualties would be confined to the 
trained officers and men to whom the country 
must look for the rapid organization and train- 
ing of the militia and the national volunteers. 
This is what actually occurred in the case of 
Great Britain in 1914, and the British army was 
many times larger than is the American army. 
In the course of three months a great propor- 
tion of the trained British officers and men were 
wiped out by reason of the overwhelming and 
unreasonable burden that was thrown upon 
them. Any system that thus feeds away the 
military seed corn of a nation is uneconomical 
and foolhardy. 

77 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

It will hardly be denied that any war of seri- 
ous proportions in which the United States 
might become involved, w^ould necessitate the 
calling into the field of a million men. Mr. 
Bryan asserts that that number of volunteers 
would respond in a trice. Assuming that this 
is possible, and that the first line or regular 
troops were not immediately involved, either 
the regular army would be seriously crippled by 
withdrawing the requisite number of trained 
general, field, and staff officers from the first 
line for the proper organization and training 
of the untutored volunteers, or the latter would 
have to flounder about hopelessly in the school 
of bitter experience, at great expense to them- 
selves and the nation, in blood and time. Con- 
ditions of warfare have so changed as to neces- 
sitate the mobilization of nations rather than 
small armies, and a limited peace army no 
longer possesses the expansive power necessary 
to mold and absorb the citizen volunteers upon 
the advent of war. 

But this is not all. In the organized militia 
of the United States is found in time of peace 
a large proportion of the citizens who possess 
natural taste combined with proper qualifica- 
tions for military service. Being the first 

78 



THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

available reserve for the standing army, these 
men would naturally be rushed into the first 
line of defense and thus be compelled to share 
in the abnormal losses always incident to the 
outbreak, whether from casualties in a quick 
succession of violent conflicts, physical break- 
down due to abnormal exertion, or disease. 
Thus would be sacrificed those who, next to the 
professional soldiers, are best fit to constitute 
the commissioned personnel of the second line 
or volunteers. Inadequate and incomplete as 
their militia training may have been, the men 
who comprise the better militia regiments are 
more efficient than troops with no training at 
all, and among the forward, the loyal, the en- 
thusiastic militiamen is always to be found 
material capable of high development. The ex- 
isting system simply ignores these possibilities ; 
it is lavishly extravagant in its wastefulness of 
the nation's resources of officers and men. The 
modern social science has never been applied by 
American statesmen to the problem of national 
defense— the most vital of all social problems, 
for upon an effective and successful system of 
defense the happiness and welfare of a national 
society depend. 
The view of the extreme Pacifists or Disarma- 

79 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

mentists that an army is a useless thing and 
nneconomic in its nature may be correct. One 
thing is certain : an army actually in existence, 
and maintained at vast expense, is even more 
uneconomic if inefficient than when highly pro- 
ficient. So long as the military institution 
seems warranted in the eyes of government it 
would seem desirable, even to the disarmamen- 
tists, to maintain it upon the most economical 
basis, both from the material and social stand- 
points. There is no social justification or sound 
economic reason for the military institution of 
the United States as presently constituted. It 
is a social and economic anomaly only explica- 
ble by a complete lack of scientific consideration 
on the part of statesmen of the national prob- 
lem of defense, coupled with the unreasoning 
prejudices of the people which cause them to 
ignore the counsel of military men who under- 
stand that problem in the light of modern 
science. 

To the recent military legislation there are 
many objections from a purely military stand- 
point. It is not designed here to encroach upon 
the province of the technical authorities, but it 
should be pointed out that the Hay Bill pro- 
vides for the establishment of the organized 

80 



THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

militia on the basis of population, making of it 
a territorial force. The result is that where the 
population is densest the militia will be most 
numerous, a condition which has no regard for 
the strategic necessities of defense. It so hap- 
pens that the country is most subject to land- 
invasion where population is very thin; there- 
fore, in quarters where it is strategically most 
vulnerable it will be the most poorly defended. 
Congress has failed so far to distinguish be- 
tween the potential military strength of the 
nation, which is very great, and its actual 
strength. It has failed to perceive the great 
truth enunciated by the philosopher. Bacon, 
that ^^ number itself, in armies, importeth not 
much. ' ' It is the strength in being that counts 
— the actually developed power. An army of 
vast size, as a whole, is nothing more than a 
series of small forces, if broken up and distrib- 
uted in fractions incapable of being concen- 
trated for joint action. The power of the Amer- 
ican army must be gauged by the number of 
trained troops that can be united promptly at 
a given point. On paper the regular army of 
the United States to-day numbers about 100,- 
000 men ; its actual military strength is that of 
about forty thousand men at the most, includ- 

81 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

ing the best equipped and trained militia 
troops, for a greater number could not be in- 
stantly assembled at any one point. 

The problem with which the people of the 
United States must deal is one of statics. Our 
untrained and partly trained fighting men may 
be likened to potential energy; our small regu- 
lar or standing army to kinetic or developed, 
moving energy. Time is required to transform 
potential into kinetic energy. Formerly the sur- 
rounding seas, through the barrier to invasion 
which they interposed, insured the necessary 
time for the transformation ; to-day those same 
seas, instead of being a protection, afford a 
means of rapid and secret transportation to our 
shores. Few peoples would assume to engage 
in war with the United States, or with China, if 
the whole potential strength of either of these 
were fully developed. No Power fears China, 
and almost any great Power could inflict tre- 
mendous losses upon the United States — for de- 
fense contemplates force in being, not poten- 
tial force, and the time requisite to the trans- 
formation is exactly what an enemy would not 
allow a country of such unlimited undeveloped 
resources. 

In the United States there exists a peculiar 

82 



THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

need for a national army. So diverse are the 
race elements, the sectional interests, and the 
local traditions of the people inhabiting the 
land, that some great common interest is nec- 
essary to fuse the conglomerate mass into an 
American people with a truly national spirit — 
the same in New England, the South, the Mid- 
dle West, and on the Pacific Coast. Every stu- 
dent of political science tells us that the ten- 
dency of the Congressional system of our Gov- 
ernment is to make the representatives of the 
people local in their attachments. It is for this 
reason that statesmen in the broad, national 
sense are so rarely found in our political life; 
our system simply does not develop them as 
does the Parliamentary system under which a 
political leader is the representative of all the 
people without regard to their narrow, sec- 
tional interests. 

The ''Pork-barrel,** which seems to play so 
large a part in our national politics, is the logi- 
cal result of the narrow representative system 
on which Congress is based. Some great, coun- 
teracting influence would seem to be desirable 
in order to impress upon the people of all sec- 
tions the fact that the Federal Government is 
entitled to a common service on their part in re- 

83 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

turn for the bounty which it yields so liberally. 
Some great institution is necessary to the life of 
the Nation which will federalize the spirit of 
our people, and no institution suggests itself 
that is so eminently adapted to this purpose as 
a national army in which Federal service is 
compulsory. Who can doubt that the devotion 
of two or three years of their lives to the na- 
tional cause would generate in the breasts of 
our citizens a deeper and a higher affection and 
respect for the flag which demanded of them the 
common sacrifice? Who can doubt that out of 
the common sacrifice of American citizens 
would grow an enlarged community of national 
interest among them? 

The results suggested are obtainable by 
means of a large national army. They can never 
flow from a small standing army, nor from a 
localized militia, however perfectly trained the 
latter may be. The very idea that military ser- 
vice is local in its obligation would subvert the 
fundamental advantages of national service 
which have already been outlined. 

There has been much written and said during 
the past few years about national defense. As 
yet little has been said to the people themselves 
concerning the ideal system of national de- 

84: 



THE AMEEICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

fense. It would seem as if those who knew, 
feared to speak prematurely, and have, through 
a mistaken caution, withheld what was in their 
minds. But the time has come when it is not 
only politic to speak out the truth, but when it 
is the duty of public men so to do. Let them 
no longer fear the organized, political influence 
of the National Guard. The militia has been 
completely disillusioned. They have paid the 
price of knowledge in experience, and a very 
bitter experience at that. They have learned 
from the recent mobilization of the so-called 
National Guard, the utter futility of depending 
for national defense, the real purpose of a ''Na- 
tional Guard, ' ' upon troops that must be trained 
and equipped after the national danger arises. 
They now know that no system of defense is 
efficient or adequate to our needs that neces- 
sarily contemplates the creation of a defensive 
force on the instant ; that defense does not con- 
template potential strength, but actual devel- 
oped strength. They see that for an army to 
possess the latter it must be in being prepared 
in advance. They have learned that the old 
militia system is utterly vicious, and they be- 
lieve that they are merely the victims of a vi- 
cious system which renders inefficient in large 

85 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

measure the fine material composing the mili- 
tia. They know that the men of the militia are 
inefficient, not for any reason inherent in them- 
selves, but simply because of the system which 
makes it impossible for them to obtain efficiency. 
We have unbounded admiration and respect for 
the splendid patriotism of our militiamen who 
have abandoned their personal obligations 
without thought of themselves. We should 
loathe and detest the system which reduces the 
sacrifices of these superb young men to noth- 
ing more nor less than economic waste. Un- 
der a proper system there would be no such 
waste. 

Is it unreasonable to contend that any system 
which causes ^'seed corn to be fed to cattle'' is 
wasteful? The militia is composed of young 
men, capable in many cases of becoming com- 
missioned officers for the discipline and training 
of a national army. Assume that our militia 
is thrown into a serious campaign. Before a 
national army could be recruited the proper 
material for its officers would have been use- 
lessly consumed as enlisted men in the militia. 
Thus, the national army would be deprived of 
the best material now in the country for its offi- 

86 



THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

cers, namely, the young men who comprise the 
better militia organizations to-day. 

We have seen how wasteful is the present 
militia system of the partly trained personnel — 
of those to whom the country must needs look 
for officers for its volunteers in event of war. 
The defect already discussed is a glaring one. 
But in the existing military institution there is 
a far more serious fault which seems all the 
more apparent when we contemplate the vast 
numbers of modern armies. 

There may be many persons who doubt the 
probability of this country being drawn into a 
war. Even these will hardly deny that, should 
the nation become involved in hostilities with a 
great power, a million men would be called to 
the colors as a minimum. The nation has had it 
impressed upon it how long it would take to 
mobilize, equip, and train such a force. The 
old belief that thirty days would suffice for the 
purpose has, fortunately, been dispelled, yet, 
while our volunteers were being assembled the 
small regular army, including as it does prac- 
tically all the trained officers and men of the na- 
tion, would be required to bear the distressing 
burden of defending the country. Whence would 
come the skilled leaders and trained organizers 

87 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

for the volunteers? Either the regular army 
would have to be drained of officers, and thereby 
rendered inefficient, or the volunteers would be 
committed, as they have been with such direful 
results in the past, to the ignorance of officers 
who would be themselves but novices in the 
game of war. In either case the defensive abil- 
ity of the country would be very weak, for the 
finest corps of trained officers could not be ex- 
pected to produce trained soldiers in the time 
that a strong enemy would allow them. It is 
not an exaggeration to say that if all the offi- 
cers in the present regular establishment were 
withdrawn from it and assigned to the task of 
training one million volunteers, those troops 
would be incapable of efficient service in sixty 
days. And suppose this were done? What 
would become of the first line of defense? 

So essential to the security of the country is 
the regular army that it must, in event of war, 
be maintained in the highest possible state of 
efficiency. Its organization simply must not 
be destroyed by drafting large numbers of offi- 
cers from it. They must remain with our only 
trained troops and bear the disproporiionate 
burden that would fall upon them. And this 

88 



THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

conclusion brings ns to the consideration of 
another serions question. 

Losses in the early stages of a war are al- 
ways excessive for many reasons. The best 
trained troops have much to learn from experi- 
ence of actual service in war. The excessive 
losses which would result from the first con- 
flicts, even assuming that our arms were suc- 
cessful, would not be distributed proportion- 
ately among the officers and men of the first 
line and the various reserves, as they are in 
Europe where armies are at once expanded 
under the national army system. Our reserve 
forces, comprised only of untrained volunteers 
and partially trained militia, would not be able 
to engage in the first conflicts. Thus, the losses 
that would fall upon us would be restricted al- 
most entirely to our few trained troops, and in 
a twinkling we would lose a large part of the 
only experienced officers in the country. This 
is but one of the many weaknesses of a system 
that contemplates the utilization of a small 
trained army for the first line of defense ; a sys- 
tem which not only sacrifices the trained sol- 
diery of the country, but robs the untrained vol- 
unteers of the skilled leadership of officers 
trained in time of peace. 

89 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

The principles of economy must be applied to 
the problem of national defense just as they 
are applied to industrial enterprises. No cap- 
tain of industry would assume to operate a vast 
industrial enterprise on so wasteful a basis, 
wasteful both in men and material, as the one 
at the foundation of our system of national de- 
fense. A national army alone can afford the 
requisite expansive ability for our first line or 
highly trained troops — it alone will conserve 
to the nation the military skill and the experi- 
ence which is acquired by it in time of peace. 

Compulsory universal military service, with 
liberal exemptions for educational purposes at 
schools and colleges where military training is 
given, and in the case of dependencies and phys- 
ical unfitness, is the only honest, fair, and eco- 
nomical system, of defense, and withal it is the 
only real democratic system. It is coming, and 
coming soon. Demos cries aloud for it, here, 
in the only country of importance in the world 
where it has not been adopted. The men who 
are now being sacrificed in the militia are going 
to see that it does come. Meantime they are 
going to do their duty to the best of their ability, 
and it will be done by them as well as possible 

90 



THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

for them to do it under the circumstances — and 
not one whit better. 

The mistake is very commonly made that a 
national army based on manhood service is an 
antocratic institution. As a matter of fact, the 
conception that with manhood suffrage goes 
hand in hand the obligation of manhood service, 
is, we have seen, a purely democratic one. A 
standing army, in the old sense, is an instru- 
ment of autocratic origin, and is far more dan- 
gerous to the liberties of a people, through its 
misuse by a ruler or governing class, than is a 
national army composed of the youthful citizens 
of the country who owe their allegiance to the 
body politic rather than to its chief executive 
and pay-master. 

Our press and public men have a rare oppor- 
tunity to render their country a service. A full 
and fair presentation of the facts of the present 
system will disclose its complete inadequacy. 
Nor will the thinking militiaman misconstrue 
such a policy as an attack upon them, for they 
know full well the essential limitations of the 
National Guard — they have had these limita- 
tions demonstrated to them in a very forceful 
way. 

The proposed continental army is but a make- 

91 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

shift — ^impracticable and visionary. The mili- 
tia was right in opposing it, but the militia sys- 
tem is equally inadequate, for it is based npon 
population. In other words, the sections of 
the country where population is most dense 
will have the most militia. And yet those sec- 
tions most exposed to land-attack are thinnest 
in population, and, therefore, the most vulner- 
able under the present system, when they should 
be the most strongly defended. 

At one time it was thought to be prudent to 
maintain state troops to safeguard State rights 
against centralized power. The very act of 
turning over the State troops to the Federal 
Government for training and exclusive use is 
an admission by the people that the old system 
is obsolete and unnecessary. If, therefore, the 
Federal Government is to control our forces ab- 
solutely and is responsible for the national de- 
fense, it should have full authority to measure 
up to its responsibilities. It can never do that 
under the present hybrid system of employing 
State troops that are not really State troops, 
and Federal troops that are national in name 
only. 

The tenacity with which the American people 
now cling to the mercenary system, even sub- 

92 



THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

sidizing their ancient, popular militia institu- 
tion, because neither citizens nor foreigners in 
sufficient numbers will longer serve the country 
without pay, is evidence of the dire need of im- 
mediate reform. Let us trust that for the pres- 
ent, and until the American people abandon 
their fatuous course — their valorous ignorance 
— that a danger as great as that which has of 
late threatened to destroy the democracies of 
Europe, will not more successfully imperil the 
destiny of America. The national mind should 
be prepared to accept that bitter truth which 
Britain has been forced to acknowledge. A 
belief in and the recognition of actual danger 
must come before the old prejudices will be 
abandoned, for in spite of the oft-expressed 
wisdom of Washington, who, from his experi- 
ence, was able to plead in good faith for a better 
defense than untrained militia affords, and who 
endeavored in vain to convince his countrymen 
that their fears of trained soldiery were ill- 
founded, in spite of the fervent pleas of Hamil- 
ton, and Jay, and Adams, and Clay, the Ameri- 
can people have clung tenaciously to their old, 
inherited British prejudices, which the British 
themselves have been compelled to cast aside at 
last — but not until a bitter penance had been 

93 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

paid by them for their blind adherence to an 
obsolete principle. 

Is it too much to say that the American peo- 
ple, unless they profit by the experiences of all 
other nations — all — now that Great Britain has 
adopted compulsory military service — will pay 
the price that their unreasoning prejudices 
threaten to exact? 

Washington, the creator of our liberties, the 
founder of our State, the father of our nation, 
warned his people in solemn words against 
their blind reliance upon the voluntary system 
of defense. Said he: 

*^ Regular troops alone are equal to the ex- 
igencies of modern war as well for defense as 
offense, and when a substitute is attempted it 
must prove illusory and ruinous. 

^ ^ No militia will ever acquire the habits neces- 
sary to resist a regular force. The firmness 
for the real business of fighting is only to be 
attained by a constant course of discipline and 
service. 

^^I have never yet been a witness to a single 
instance that can justify a ditferent opinion, 
and it is most earnestly to be wished that the 
liberties of America may no longer be trusted, 

94 



THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM 

in a material degree, to so precarious a de- 
fense.'' 

The warning of Washington is clearly before 
his country. It is in the power of the American 
people to obey his counsel. Let the citizens of 
America, and not its foreign population, pro- 
vide the national defense. Let them bring into 
being that national army based on compulsory 
service which the constitution provides for. Let 
them train this army under the democratic Eu- 
ropean system by calling the junior citizens to 
the colors in time of peace, thus providing the 
regular troops which Washington pleaded for, 
without in any way abolishing the constitutional 
militia system. Washington did not demand a 
mercenary army — only a trained army. Nor 
did he condemn a citizen army, but only an un- 
trained one. 

Let us harken to the words of the great Pa- 
triot Father as they come to us across the gulf 
of time that separates the first revolution of 
American thought from that through which the 
nation soon must pass. 



95 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION 

THE reader has already been introduced to 
some of the arguments for and against 
universal compulsory military service. It is 
well, however, in concluding this study to ex- 
amine the nature, working and effects of this 
enlightened system. 

A citizen army is commonly understood to 
be what in America is called militia, a military 
force composed of citizens who in theory are 
under compulsion to serve, or who in practice 
are allowed by the State to devote part of the 
leisure their occupations afford them to mili- 
tary exercises, so as to be able when their coun- 
try calls to take the field as soldiers. When 
society was primitive and all men were soldiers 
in the sense that their muscles were hard and 
weapons were familiar to them from early 
youth, the militia system was adequate. Not 
the least reason for its effectiveness was the 

96 



THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION 

fact that no other more efficient system existed. 
But when war became a scientific profession 
citizen soldiers, or warriors who devoted their 
leisure only to military training, found them- 
selves utterly unable to cope with regularly 
maintained troops. 

**It is well known,'' says Seeley, ^^how empty 
is the commonplace of rhetoric which represents 
their untutored patriotism as more than a match 
for trained skill. Scharnhorst, the originator 
of the modern system, was under no such de- 
lusion. He well knew that a citizen army com- 
posed of young peasants and young tradesmen 
or mechanics, would not prove a better match 
for the trained conscripts of Napoleon than 
were the old Prussian soldiers, unless that army 
was as thoroughly trained as a professional 
army. ' ' 

But how is it possible for the whole manhood 
of a nation to be made into professional sol- 
diers! How is it possible to give to every indi- 
vidual, not merely some little practice in han- 
dling arms, but a complete physical and mili- 
tary training as well? How is it possible to 
impart discipline to an entire race and make 
every individual think, and feel, and act as a 
part of the great corporate whole. This was 

97 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

the problem presented to Sctiarnhorst, and it 
was one which had never, perhaps, in any coun- 
try been seriously considered before his time. 

A citizen-soldier, in the old sense of the word, 
was no great burden on the Government. Called 
out only occasionally, he practically supported 
himself, and imposed no overwhelming expense 
upon the State while in its service. But pro- 
fessional soldiers must be supported, for they 
abandon all other pursuits for the military vo- 
cation. The modern citizen or national army 
does not, therefore, resemble a militia, but a 
standing army, in the demand it makes upon the 
yearly budget of the State. Nevertheless, there 
is a great difference between a national army 
and that of America in respect to its cost. In 
the latter army service is engaged under a vol- 
untary contract ; rate of pay is based on an en- 
tirely different principle from that which dic- 
tates the amount of compensation for a na- 
tional conscript. In the citizen-army the pay of 
soldiers is merely the amount necessary for 
their support, and may be lowered according to 
the circumstance of the social and economic 
conditions prevailing in the State, whereas the 
pay of voluntary soldiers is the amount that will 

98 



THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION 

induce the necessary number of men to aban- 
don civil vocations. 

But what becomes of industry and agricul- 
ture with all men in the mihtary service! 

The training necessary to form a professional 
soldier does not require him to be withdrawn 
from civil pursuits forever, but only for a given 
time, and this time need not be very long if the 
training is intensive. It comprises but a brief 
period of a man's lifetime. The essential thing 
is that it be given continuously until the citizen 
becomes a soldier in habit of thought and dis- 
ciplined action for the remainder of his life, and 
is thus prepared to reassume the duties of a 
skilled professional at his country's call. Only 
a brief annual rehearsal is necessary to pre- 
serve this skill when once acquired. This being 
so, the young man who has not yet acquired 
the full responsibilities of life is the one taken 
for a continuous period of training, passing on 
to the reserve when his military habits are 
formed. In the reserve he is subject only to a 
brief annual training in peace time, but he is 
liable to be called to the colors instantly to 
swell the active ranks in an emergency. And 
then there is the second reserve, or Landwehr, 
and the third reserve, or Landsturm, to which 

99 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

the soldiers are attached as they progress in 
age, subject to call successively as the exigen- 
cies may require. Under such a system all men 
must be at one time the equivalent in efficiency 
of the professional soldier, and when released 
from active service with the colors they re- 
main in the army until past the serviceable age, 
retaining a degree of proficiency varying in- 
versely as their length of service. Thus, the 
whole manhood of the State is kept in the mili- 
tary service and rendered instantly available 
as soldiers with the minimum of expense and at 
the least possible inconvenience to and inter- 
ference with the private vocations of the citi- 
zens. 

And here we should remark that this system 
obviates the necessity of depending upon vol- 
untary service. Armies are too large to-day 
for a State to have to depend upon voluntary 
enlistment. There are no longer multitudes of 
men, as formerly, to whom military service is a 
last resort for subsistence ; public order, which 
everywhere reigns, has greatly diminished this 
class, and few men worth having enter a volun- 
teer army nowadays with the thought of pecu- 
niary gain foremost in their minds. The devel- 
opment of industry has provided employment 

100 



THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION 

for all who can and will work; education has 
reduced the number of social skulkers ; and vol- 
unteers in time of peace are only to be had to- 
day by persuasive and disgusting advertising 
propaganda, which is a reflection on the nation 
that tolerates it, or by reason of some peculiar 
taste for a military life among those who volun- 
teer. Obligatory service is, therefore, the only 
effective means of securing the defense of the 
State, and this being so, the tax of blood has 
come to be regarded in all enlightened countries 
but one, as a burden to be equally distributed 
among all the citizens. 

The spirit of armies has been greatly modi- 
fied by the general introduction of the conscrip- 
tive system in Europe, and notwithstanding the 
predictions of those who first opposed it in al- 
most every country, that spirit has been en- 
nobled. It is impossible to compare an army 
composed of young men nurtured in a spirit of 
order and obedience with one in which a mi- 
nority only is animated by the love of country 
and the majority is drawn from the lower strata 
of life. How much better is the public secured, 
and how much more elevated is the spirit of 
the army bound to be, when the national de- 
fense is confided to those who regard military 

101 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

service as a high and important civic duty. 
*^The young man who is designated by lot, 
peaceable in his habits, may leave his family 
with grief ; but the warlike spirit, so natural to 
man, soon animates him; he then cherishes 
noble thoughts ; he becomes greater in his own 
eyes; he is faithful, devoted, and finds in the 
good opinion of his officers and of his compan- 
ions the reward of his sacrifice, his labors, and 
his dangers.'' * 

Plausible efforts have always been made by 
American demagogues and the popular idols of 
the people to maintain the voluntary system in 
the affections of their constituents, adducing 
much sentimental twaddle in evidence of its 
highly democratic nature and its peculiar fit- 
ness for a free people. But the real advantages 
of a system which tends to fill the ranks with 
fighting men only, and entrusts a nation's vital 
interests to hands which may or may not be 
worthy, according to the social unrest and eco- 
nomic pressure of society, are inconsiderable in 
comparison with the benefits of national con- 
scription. By this assertion is meant no reflec- 
tion upon the magnificent volunteer regular 

* Marmont. 

102 



THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION 

troops that have so far sufficed to police our 
borders and dominions. 

The inherent right which every society pos- 
sesses to personal service from its members is 
undoubted. It is recognized in all enlightened 
political constitutions, including that of the 
United States. Since an army is instituted for 
the maintenance of the highest welfare of the 
State, the obligation to military service is the 
most just and the most important of all those 
which are the consequences of social compact. 

The system of obligatory service being the 
only one compatible with the present state of 
civihzation, let us now examine into the con- 
siderations by which its practical working 
should be regulated for the greatest benefit both 
of the American people and the American State. 

The age at which young men are to be called 
upon to serve should be fixed at that period 
when they may be supposed to be possessed of 
abundant physical strength to sustain the fa- 
tigues of training — and possible war. This age 
is almost universally fixed at twenty or there- 
abouts; to require earlier service from them 
would halt their education, impair their health, 
and fill the hospitals rather than the ranks. 

The next point to be determined is the dura- 

103 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

tion of service. This involves two conflicting 
interests : that of the army, which would keep 
the conscript long enough to make him the equal 
of the best trained foreign soldiers ; that of the 
people, who would abridge as much as possible 
the term of service with the colors. The ele- 
ments of compromise are usually contained in 
the following considerations : Firstly, they con- 
sult the military spirit of the nation; the cus- 
tomary and prescribed training which the aver- 
age young man undergoes in school, their phys- 
ical and intellectual aptitudes, and conse- 
quently their fitness for and congeniaUty to 
military instruction. Secondly, deducting the 
time required for instruction in each of the 
three arms, infantry, cavalry, and artillery, the 
duration of service is then fixed in such manner 
that the State may have, for a certain length of 
time, the benefit of their proficiency, reserving 
the power of calling upon them, as well quali- 
fied soldiers, at least a year longer than the 
actual period, requisite for instruction. In 
America service with the colors for a term of 
two years would be, under all the circumstances, 
not too long. Thirdly, the training and instruc- 
tion of the conscripts should also have a view to 
their welfare after leaving the colors, and they 

104 



THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION 

should return to civil life young enough to 
create for themselves a favorable position in 
competition with their fellows, and secure an 
independent future. 

The third consideration relates to the number 
of men annually to be called to the colors for 
training. This must vary with the condition 
of the country and the requirements of the mo- 
ment. The policy governing the annual draft 
should be highly elastic. When industrial con- 
ditions impose heavy demands upon the ranks 
of labor, the military ranks should respond, but 
when unemployment is extensive, as it always is 
in periods of industrial depression, the surplus 
workers should be absorbed by the army. Such 
a flexibility of the drafting system would solve 
many social problems and minimize hindrance 
to the solution of the economic problems of the 
country. No violently sudden and demoraliz- 
ing fluctuations would probably occur. Assume 
that the size of the national army is fixed at 
500,000 men, and service with the colors at two 
years. The annual draft would be only about 
200,000, approximately, a number little larger 
than that now proposed to be drawn from the 
ranks of industry for the regular army. Volun- 
tary enlistment would supply the remaining 

105 



THE CALL OF THE EEPUBLIC 

50,000 men. No one will seriously argue tliat 
the economic conditions of the country would be 
disturbed by so small a draft. 

The fourth question refers to the mode of 
raising the annual contingent or yearly class of 
recruits. When the number has been deter- 
mined, it should be apportioned among the 
States according to the population of the last 
census, and by the States among the counties 
and towns on a similar basis. The most demo- 
cratic way of determining the selection of the 
individual recruits is by lot, for official choice 
is too much subject to local abuses. 

Eeasonable exemption, not by class, or from 
social considerations, however, is essential to 
any practical and well-ordered system of con- 
scription. Exemptions are of two kinds, the 
first in the interest of the State, the second in 
the interest of the individual citizens and their 
families. The State must decline young men 
who have not the size, strength, or ability to 
bear arms, or who are morally unfit for the mili- 
tary service. The families are entitled to re- 
tain among them such men as are necessary for 
the support of aged and infirm parents, and also 
those whose brothers are already in the army, 
or have been killed or mutilated in combat. A 

106 



THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION 

family which has furnished a soldier who has 
been killed in the service of his country, or 
which has one of its members in training, has 
manifestly made a liberal contribution to the 
common welfare. Young men who desire to 
enter professions which are essential to society 
and confer a public benefit upon the State, such 
as the priesthood, public instruction, etc., 
should be given a dispensation which differs 
from exemption in as much as the latter is final 
and the former conditional, expiring with the 
reason for which it was given. All young men 
who enter schools where military training and 
instruction is given should receive dispensa- 
tion and be enrolled under proper conditions as 
officers of the second reserve upon the comple- 
tion of their educational course. 

Voluntary enlistment on the part of those 
exempted with pay should be allowed, and also 
substitution, so controlled as to prevent the pos- 
sibility of abuses creeping in. Every man should 
have the right to serve one year without re- 
ward, on condition of equipping and maintain- 
ing himself at his own charge during his ser- 
vice, and joining the second reserve upon his 
discharge. The expense thus saved would be 
sufficient to provide for the voluntary enlist- 

107 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

ment pay of others. The voluntary class, com- 
posed of seasoned and tested professional sol- 
diers, would furnish the experienced non-com- 
missioned officers requisite for the discipline of 
the conscripts. 

After two years with the colors the conscripts 
should pass into the reserve and for ^ve years 
remain liable to be recalled to the colors, and 
receive practical training in their old regiments 
for a month each year. 

The service of the reservist would extend to 
his twenty-seventh year. The average citizen 
has not acquired the full responsibilities of life 
before that age. 

At twenty-seven the soldier should pass on to 
the second reserve for a service of seven years 
with only occasional training, and at thirty-four 
into the third reserve, subject to no training, 
and at forty-five be finally discharged from 
the army. 

A standing army of 500,000 men would be in- 
stantly increased to about 1,500,000 well-trained 
men, all under twenty-seven years of age, by 
calling the first reserve to the colors, and by 
summoning the second reserve, to about 2,800,- 
000, while the entire national army would total 
not less than 4,000,000 men, all of whom had 

108 



THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION 

served with the colors and become trained sol- 
diers. Statisticians claim that there are 15,- 
000,000 or more men in the United States of 
military age, all of whom are liable for military 
service under the Constitution. The national 
army which has been outlined would, in time 
of peace, require the service of but one man in 
every thirty, and in time of war with the whole 
army in service, but one man in every four, a 
proportion considerably smaller than that 
which the army of the United Kingdom bears 
to its male population at the present time. 

We have considered the military advantages 
of a national army. Let us now review the 
social advantages to the State of such an army. 

The possession of a powerful and well-disci- 
plined army is of great social benefit to a State, 
for it provides a popular school, not only for 
training soldiers but for cultivating in the body 
politic manly virtues in an age when business 
and pleasure often cause higher ideals to be 
forgotten. The system of universal service 
never proves repugnant to normal men. It is 
the normal man and not the ^'Quakers'' of life 
that social institutions must be adapted to. The 
system we have outlined provides an outlet for 

109 



THE CALL OF THE EEPUBLIC 

the abnormal citizen with just grounds for ex- 
oneration from service. 

It also provides a great training school for 
the industrial apprentices of the nation. True, 
it does not train them in the work of industry, 
but it does prepare their minds and their bodies 
for a better competition in the strife of life. It 
is a distinct moralizer of men and, therefore, 
confers upon them a lasting benefit. 

John Stuart Mill said that until the indus- 
trial workers performed their functions in the 
same orderly way in which soldiers were ac- 
customed to labor, industry would never be 
morahzed. Universal military service disci- 
plines the future industrial workers of a nation 
and imparts to them habits of obedience, 
promptitude, and thoroughness, thus render- 
ing them more competent, responsible, and 
faithful in the discharge of life's duties. The 
permanent acquisition of such virtues by train- 
ing in the formative period of manhood more 
than counterbalances the loss of time from 
labor incurred while serving with the colors, 
nor is any individual placed at a greater dis- 
advantage than his competitor since the civil 
careers of all are postponed alike. Where the 
disadvantages of all men in society are equal, 

110 



THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION 

there is really no relative advantage gained by 
some over others among them. 

If one will but visit the section of a great 
city where the working classes are wont to find 
their recreation on a Sunday afternoon, and 
examine carefully the crowds of young men to 
be seen there, loitering about, and then visit an 
army post and examine men of the same class 
but recently become soldiers, many social ad- 
vantages of military training will occur to his 
mind. His conclusions will appear to be irre- 
sistible. The erect bodies, the alert step, the 
bright eyes, the clear skin, and the full mus- 
cular development of the trained soldier may 
with infinite benefit to the nation be given to 
the ill-nourished and haggard-featured labor- 
ing classes of America in their youth by uni- 
versal compulsory military service, along with 
the better habits of mind and body which have 
been enumerated. Physical, like mental devel- 
opment remains with men throughout their 
lives — both are assets to the men of the strug- 
gling lower classes, which they themselves can- 
not acquire unaided. For them military ser- 
vice would atford the opportunities which 
healthy living conditions and college athletics 
afford the sons of the more fortunate. 

Ill 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

But of all the social benefits to be bad from 
tiniversal military service the fostering of the 
spirit of democracy is, perhaps, the most valued. 
The writer once witnessed the meeting of a 
French soldier-duke in America with a veteran 
chasseur employed as a stable groom. As the 
old soldier led out a mount for the duke, who 
was his master's guest, the latter addressed 
him in the democratic manner common to 
French superior officers. At once the servant's 
attitude became that of respectful appreciation 
and in the rapid conversation which ensued it 
was not difficult to detect the influence of a 
common service in the army of the great Re- 
public. There was no easy familiarity, no sug- 
gestion of social equality, but the mental atti- 
tude of these two men — nobleman and peasant 
— was that of two citizens with equal respect, 
one for the other. This is but one instance, 
striking as it was, of many similar ones that 
compel those who have studied the effects of 
universal service to believe that the national 
army is an effective antidote to the undemo- 
cratic spirit engendered by social castes, which 
inevitably arise in unmilitary as well as mili- 
tary, free as well as autocratic, democratic as 
well as aristocratic societies. 

112 



THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION 

Universal military service not only creates 
among those subjected to it a camaraderie while 
in the service, but it creates a keener sympathy 
between the conscripts representing various 
social strata which is enduring. It impresses 
the sons of luxury with the sterling qualities of 
those with whom intimate contact in civil life 
might never have been had without it. It 
teaches the humbler citizens to understand and 
appreciate the good qualities of those under 
whom in later life they must earn their bread. 
It is the great leveller of strong men, the dif- 
fuser of common sympathies, inculcates the 
sense of a common purpose among all citizens, 
and is the generator of a sterner love of coun- 
try than the flabby patriotism imbibed from 
school books and oratory. Those who have 
served their flag in the ranks are more apt to 
cherish a higher respect for that flag and all 
that it means, because of the sacrifice they have 
made for it, than those for whom it is a mere 
sentiment, and the ideals which are impressed 
upon them are transmitted upon their retire- 
ment to the civil walks of life to the people at 
large, both young and old. 

The recent mobilization of the militia has 
demonstrated the injustice of the voluntary sys- 

113 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

tern in this country. Many yonng men sacrificed 
their business and professional careers in order 
to respond to the call of the State. The State 
can never reimburse many of them for their 
losses. Some of them assumed too great a bur- 
den. The excessive patriotism of these men 
was but exploited for the benefit of their fel- 
low citizens who remained at home. Why, let 
us enquire, should Smith be allowed to sacri- 
fice himself for his Country? Does the Coun- 
try demand that any citizen should sacrifice 
himself? And why should Smith, who hap- 
pened to be in the militia, be called upon to 
serve while Jones, his partner, or his friend, 
or his fellow citizen, remains at home and grows 
rich? Why should this woman's son be called 
to die in the trenches, and that woman's son be 
allowed to avoid all danger at his own discre- 
tion? 

These questions may at first seem to involve 
a personal issue between Smith and Jones, and 
their mothers. But they go deeper than that. 
They involve the most fundamental principles 
of the social democracy and the economic com- 
petence of the State. 

No citizen should be allowed to make the de- 
cision as to whether or not he should render 

114 



THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION 

that service in arms which his own and the se- 
curity of his fellow citizens may or may not re- 
quire. Nor should he be burdened with the ne- 
cessity of making that decision. 

Every citizen is under a peculiar social and 
economic obligation to his State, as well as 
under a military obligation. The last may bet- 
ter be served, in many cases, by not taking up 
arms than by so doing, and the Government is 
the proper authority to determine who should 
and who should not serve in the ranks. 

Many men are so constituted that patriotic 
fervor clouds their judgment. Enthusiasm for 
service leads others to ignore their social obli- 
gations. And no man who is really fit to serve 
his country in the ranks would willingly remain 
at his lathe, or other industrial task, in prefer- 
ence to shouldering a musket. It is no more 
right to allow a man to abandon his dependent 
family for patriotic or other reasons than it 
is to permit an indispensable mechanic to crip- 
ple the machinery of war by enlisting. And so 
the State itself should say who shall and who 
shall not serve with the colors. This is a de- 
cision which should not be left to the citizens 
themselves as individuals. 

When a mechanic, and one upon whom the ob- 

115 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

ligations of supporting those who otherwise 
would become a charge upon the State, are de- 
nied the privilege of serving with the colors by 
the State itself, they are relieved from the 
odium among their fellows of voluntarily avoid- 
ing military service. This is only just. Those 
who are called upon to serve go to the front 
with a lighter heart than if they were consumed 
with the doubts that beset every man who elects 
of his own will to abandon his family and his 
civil pursuits. Those who remain at home do so 
with the satisfaction of a full knowledge that 
they could not serve if they would, until called 
upon by the State. 

These principles are well illustrated by the 
recent experiences of Great Britain where so- 
cial chaos has at last given way to a systematic, 
rational system under which the man-power of 
the nation has been organized in accordance 
with the existing social, economic, and strictly 
military necessities. Woe to the State that does 
not now recognize the fact that war must be 
waged at home as well as on the firing line — in 
the marts of commerce and in the industrial 
centers as well as on the sea and in the 
trenches — for war is no longer a conflict be- 
tween armies composed of a surplus of men, 

116 



THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION 

but is one between whole peoples, men, women 
and children, of all classes and conditions. 

The social benefits flowing from universal 
military service are not detected in the case of 
small armies. The number of men passing 
through the ranks and back into civil life is too 
small to make its impress upon the whole peo- 
ple. The ex-soldier is notable in many ways, 
but he is more notable than potent in his in- 
fluence upon the civil community. The full ad- 
vantage of military training can only be had for 
the race through the medium of universal com- 
pulsory service in a national army. The bene- 
fits, both social and economic, outweigh the 
cost in money of such an army many, many 
times, as has been proved in every country in 
Europe. 

Compulsory military service is too commonly 
misconceived to be a distinctly social institu- 
tion. It is that and more. A national army is 
bound up with the economic welfare of the na- 
tion supporting it. As said by Mill, it is the 
moralizer of industry. No higher duty rests 
upon our political leaders and our press to-day 
than that of educating the people of America in 
the democratic principles of compulsory ser- 
vice, and up to the need of a national army 

117 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

wliicli would actually release the workers of to- 
day from an unjust burden. It should be shown 
them that not they themselves but the rising 
generation would assume the physical burden 
of national defense under a proper system of 
military service. In large measure it would be 
the young men, or the apprentices of life, who 
would shoulder the muskets of defense. Men 
with the full responsibilities of life would not 
be subjected to the present hardships of vol- 
untary military service^a service in which pa- 
triotism and individual sacrifices are capitalized 
for the benefit of the whole people, worthy and 
unworthy alike. 

The American people will sooner or later be 
compelled to adopt the European system; 
whether before or after an ordeal such as that 
through which the British Empire is passing, 
remains to be seen. May they harken, before 
it is too late, to the words of Washington. May 
they respond now to the call of the Republic — 
to the words of the great patriot of an ancient 
democracy whose appeal translates itself for 
us — 

Yet, Americans, yet is there time! And 
there is one manner in which you may retain 

118 



THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION 

your greatness, or dying, fall worthy of your 
past at Yorktown and New Orleans. . . . 

Go yourselves, every man of you, and stand 
in the ranks; and either a victory beyond all 
victories in its glory awaits you, or falling, you 
shall fall greatly and worthy of your past! 



119 



CHAPTEE IX 

FEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE 

IN concluding our consideration of the insti- 
tution of universal compulsory military 
service it is well to call attention to the ill- 
founded objection to extensive military training 
which has become so popular among the masses. 

The fear of ^^ militarism '^ has seized upon 
the national mind with a tenacity born of igno- 
rance. As a matter of fact few people have 
analyzed the meaning of this dread militarism 
which they have come to fear. Vague though 
the thing may be, it seems none the less terrify- 
ing to their imagination, for whatever else it 
may be, all agree that it is undemocratic in na- 
ture. 

In his annual message to Congress in Decem- 
ber, 1914, Mr. Wilson, a student of history and 
politics, and as such an acknowledged authority, 
displayed a complete misconception of the 
meaning and nature of militarism. He had not, 

120 



FEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE 

up to that time, devoted mucli thought to mat- 
ters military, and nowhere in his politico-his- 
torical writings had he attempted to survey 
military institutions in their bearing upon the 
national and imperial developments of the last 
two centuries. Indeed, he had thought to set 
them wholly apart from the political life of 
peoples. To him the military potentiality of 
a people was but a thing of the spirit which, 
quickened by patriotic impulse could be sud- 
denly called upon to yield up a physical power 
hitherto non-existent. That which might be 
ultimately called upon as a last resort to save 
the cherished institutions of the State, was to 
be discouraged and suppressed in advance of 
the crucial hour of its need. Small wonder, 
then, that if the President himself, in whose 
knowledge of the past the people reposed their 
confidence, could stand upon the threshold of 
an uncertain future and profess to see no cause 
for alarm, that the people were reassured in 
their weakness and confirmed in their distrust 
of the so-called militarism which he had con- 
fused with universal preparedness for defense. 
Of the two evils of militarism and military un- 
preparedness, they preferred the latter, believ- 

121 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

ing as they did that militarism is an essential 
concomitant of developed military power. 

Militarism, like pacifism, is a mnch misunder- 
stood term. Pacifism has come to embrace all 
the impotent nostrums of those who desire the 
end of armed conflict, as well as rational means 
for the reduction of the evil of war. 

The propaganda of true pacifism, consisting 
of enlightenment coupled with ethical effort, is 
undoubtedly competent to eliminate war on 
trivial grounds, and war as a pastime for am- 
bitious rulers. Propaganda directed to the es- 
tablishment of universal and perpetual peace, 
and the neglect of armament, is not true 
pacifism, however, but the reverse, for it tends 
to delude the over-credulous into believing that 
the cosmic process, that essential friction of life 
out of which all progress is born, may be set 
aside. When so deceived a national society is 
but reduced to a more impotent state in the cruel 
and inexorable struggle for survival — the peo- 
ple become sheep without a shepherd. Sunk 
for a while in bovine content, they not only lose 
all desire to contend, but all ability to do so 
however imperative a great effort and a great 
sacrifice on their part may become. It is then 
that, weak in flesh and fat of heart, their moral 

122 



FEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE 

belligerency dies. It was Aristotle who pro- 
foundly remarked that a race whicli cannot quit 
itself like a man in war can achieve no great 
thing in peace. It was also Aristotle who bit- 
terly said, ^^The slave knows no leisure, and 
the State which sets peace above war is in the 
condition of the slave." He did not mean that 
the slave is perpetually at work, or that war is 
the sole duty of a great State, as thought by 
Machiavelli, and Frederick the Great, and 
Nietzsche, but he did believe that as the soul 
destined to slavery is incapable even in leisure 
of the contemplations of the soul destined to 
freedom, so to the nation which shirks its moral 
obligations to humanity and shrinks from the 
sacrifice, the greatness that belongs to a 
righteous peace can never come. Courage 
Plato defines as *'the knowledge of the things 
that a man should fear and that he should not 
fear, ' ' and in a state, a city, or an empire cour- 
age consists in the unfaltering pursuit of its 
being ^s end against all odds, when once that end 
is manifest. The race that submits to be 
baulked in the will to pursue a glorious and a 
righteous destiny but brings down upon itself 
its own doom. May a race not cherish right- 

123 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

eous peace and yet preserve its will and its 
power to wage righteous war? 

So much for the abuses of the term pacifism, 
and for the fallacies of the so-called pacifism, 
compounded as it is of illogical, unnatural, and 
unchristian theories, masquerading in a spe- 
cious guise. 

The popular and wide-spread misconception 
of the meaning of militarism is the logical re- 
sult of the illogic of false pacifism. Military 
power has been confused with the abuses of 
that power until all things military have come 
to be embraced in the popular mind within the 
meaning of militarism. How thoughtless and 
unreasoning is the more or less general use of 
the term militarism, I have endeavored to 
show in another work. {Empire and Armament, 
G. P. Putnam ^s, 1916.) Suffice it to say here 
that militarism is purely a mental state, and 
that it is merely evidenced by the physical con- 
dition which is erroneously regarded as the 
thing itself. That physical condition is in no 
sense conclusive of the mental state of militar- 
ism. 

Militarism is that political state of mind 
which confuses government with power main- 
tained by force, and which, in order to attain 

124 



FEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE 

the maximum power for government, commits 
it to the hands of a warrior caste, which rules 
for the aggrandizement of the state rather than 
for the collective interest of the individuals 
comprising it. Militarism is in a sense, Mach- 
iavellism, and only exists where the military 
caste is possessed of undue prominence and 
precedence in the conduct of national affairs. 
Thus it is possible to have militarism with a 
small army, as in certain Latin- American coun- 
tries of the opera-bouffe type, as well as with 
a large army, as in Germany and Austria. But 
the size of an army, and the proportion of 
trained citizens, and their relative degree of 
military efficiency, have no essential connection 
with militarism. A larger proportion of the 
French people than of the German people was 
trained with the colors prior to 1914. This was 
necessarily so in as much as the armies of these 
two nations were nearly equal in size though 
the population of France was one third smaller 
than that of Germany. Military service was 
more nearly universal in Switzerland than in 
any other country. Yet militarism did not ex- 
ist either in Switzerland or France. 

Nor does the amount of national expenditure 
on the military institution in any way deter- 

125 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

mine militarism. The individual financial mili- 
tary bnrden of the people of the United States 
in 1915 was $4.60, whereas the average indi- 
vidual burden of the German people for the 
preceding thirteen years was but $3.70 Based 
on the individual financial military burden alone 
in the year 1911, for instance, the Powers would 
have stood in the scale of militarism as fol- 
lows: 

1. Great Britain, 

2. France, 

3. Germany, 

4. United States, 

5. Russia. 

Do we not know that with respect to the 
actual political importance of the military caste 
in these countries, the rating should be very dif- 
ferent? 

Men point to the petty tyrannies of military 
upstarts over civilians in Germany, and cry, 
*^ Behold what awaits you from conscription !' ' 
Such arguments have precisely the same value 
as the arguments against a republican form of 
government because of the excesses of the 
French Revolution. We might as well con- 
demn all free institutions because of Tammany 
Hall, as condemn compulsory service because of 

126 



PEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE 

its abuses in other countries. Why not also 
point to the Pretorians of Rome, or to the Otto- 
man Janizaries? Their cases are just as rele- 
vant as the case of Germany. Why not appeal 
to them as long as we have ignored the present 
facts of Switzerland, and France, and the neces- 
sities of Great Britain? But when we recall 
the Pretorians are we also to forget the Athens 
of Plato and Sophocles — that glorious military 
state in which art and culture and citizen- 
soldiers flourished side by side? 

If it be argued that militarism, embodied in 
the German military institutions, brought upon 
the world the dreadful calamity of the war of 
1914, 1 need but reply that universal compulsory 
military service alone enabled the mother state 
to survive the storm of that war, and that the 
vast conscript armies of Great Britain, France, 
Eussia, and Italy, are being utilized to-day, not 
to sustain but to overthrow militarism! 

The fear of militarism in the United States is 
ill-founded. All institutions are transfigured 
by the ideals which call them into being. It is 
not the mere differences in the constitutional 
articles under which the American and the Ger- 
man states are confederated that differentiate 

127 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

those unions — ^it is their respective ideals of 
human freedom. 

Pursuing the thought of another, I might say 
that there is nothing in our annals which war- 
rants evil presage from the growth of our 
army, nothing which precludes the hope, the just 
confidence that our very blood and the inefface- 
able character of our race will save us from 
any mischief that militarism may have brought 
to others, and that in the future another chiv- 
alry may arise which shall be to other armies 
and other systems what the Anglo-Saxon ideal 
of popular liberty is to the political institutions 
of other peoples — a paragon and an example. 

Slight consideration will compel one to admit 
that militarism has to do neither with the size 
nor the cost of armies, and that it has but de- 
rived its name from that medium through which 
it may manifest itself — the military institution, 
and that it is neither the parent nor the off- 
spring of national armament for defense. We 
must, therefore, conclude that it is the out- 
growth of excessive governmental centraliza- 
tion, which cannot exist in the United States 
under its present form of government, however 
large an army may be maintained, and however 
well trained in arms our citizens might be, and 

128 



FEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE 

however well prepared to save to humanity 
those priceless institutions which we inherited 
from our forefathers. 

Nations may be classified both with respect 
to the status of their military institutions and 
their national dispositions in the past as fol- 
lows: 

1. Militaristic, militant; German type. 

2. Military, militant; French type. 

3. Military, pacific; Swiss type. 

4. Unmilitary, militant ; British type. 

5. Unmilitary, pacific; China type. 

The difference between the German and the 
French types in this classification illustrates 
the true meaning of militarism in a very force- 
ful way. 

A survey of the history of the United States 
up to 1914 would seem to indicate that it be- 
longed to the most dangerous of these types, 
or the British type — the most dangerous be- 
cause militant, yet unprepared as a whole peo- 
ple. Eecent events would seem to indicate, 
however, that the nation, honey-combed with 
pacifism to a greater extent than even Great 
Britain, has lost its old militant spirit, and un- 
able to rise with the sword of Christ to a plane 
of moral belligerency, has sunk under the in- 

129 



THE CALL OF THE EEPUBLIC 

fluence of the false teachings of St. Pierre, and 
Kant, and Tolstoi to that of un military paci- 
fism — to that plane in which the horrors and the 
evils of human strife are allowed to obscure 
completely the moral grandeur of righteous 
war, and the uplifting influence of a sacrifice to 
an ideal. 

For a brief period it seemed as if the British 
Empire had lost not only its will, but its ability 
to rise above this sordid, immoral plane. But 
with what high hope for Christendom and the 
spiritual salvation of humanity it freed itself 
from the sloth of false pacifism, and cast aside 
the fatuous doctrines of the misguided, over- 
zealous humanitarians ! How grandly was the 
fate that had almost overtaken it under this 
false leadership denied ! Was it not Christ who 
whispered into the national ear in that dark 
hour of travail and uncertainty : ' ' What profit- 
eth your wealth if your soul be lost? Arise 
and go forth with the sword of truth which 
I have given unto you ! Put on the whole 
armor of God! Fear not to strike for that 
spiritual peace that passeth all understand- 
ing!'' And thus touched, the soul of the na- 
tion responded to its awakened conscience, and 
a people, sure of the divine justice of their mis- 

130 



FEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE 

sion, and with all evil shed away, rose to strike 
with God-given might for truth, for justice, and 
for humanity! Can it be that peace — supine 
peace — can hold for a race so great a reward 
as that which will come with Christ's victory? 
Shall we scorn the valor of those who go forth 
to conquer in His name? How can we bring 
ourselves to despise the blood sacrifices of the 
brave, and hold the ideals for which they offered 
up their all as unworthy of the tribute of hu- 
man life? Do not the God-like choirs of poster- 
ity live through the dying deeds of those whose 
requiem they chant? And what shall become of 
our faith if we must believe with the pacifist that 
in an hour of unwisdom God permits the smil- 
ing, beardless youth of a warrior race to per- 
ish and their mothers to weep vainly? 

In order that we may retain our faith we 
need not demand to know in advance the where- 
fore of all things. Wisdom may consist of 
knowing what one does not have to know. Let 
us say with Socrates: **What God is I know 
not ; what he is not, I know.'' Do we not know 
that God created between men the great an- 
tagonisms out of which strife arises, so that 
**The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the 
vengeance : He shall wash his feet in the blood 

131 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

of the wicked; so that men shall say, Verily 
there is a reward for the righteous: Verily 
there is a God that judgeth in the Earth.'' 
(Psalms 59. 10, 11.) And shall we derive no 
consolation from the words of the Greek orator 
who could declare — ^*0f the dead who have 
fallen in battle the wide Earth itself is the 
sepulchre ; their tomb is not the grave in which 
they are laid, but the undying memory of the 
generations that come after them. They per- 
ish, snatched in a moment, in the height of 
achievement, not from their fear, but from their 
renown. Fortunate! And you who have lost 
them, you, who as mortal have been born sub- 
ject unto disaster, how fortunate are you to 
whom sorrow comes in so glorious a shape!'' 

Is there for mankind only loss, and sorrow, 
and bitter regret in the death of Kitchener 
whose tomb is some unknown cavern of the sea, 
but whose watery grave shall be forever decked 
with a wreath of spray and billows? 

Is the Calvary a meaningless symbol? 

To these queries we answer, no — emphatically 
no ! These things are far from being meaning- 
less. Symbolical of our most exalted aspira- 
tions they are the planets in the firmament of 
our faith — often o 'erclouded and obscured from 

132 



FEAR OF MILITAEISM UNREASONABLE 

our moral vision, but ever there above us, and 
ever and anon shining down upon us with re- 
newed brilliance to guide and to beckon us on 
through the darkness of doubt. 

It is he who so loudly claims to do God's 
bidding — the importunate pacifist — who is lack- 
ing in faith; he who chafes at the will of God, 
and not the soldier who willingly sheds his 
blood for an ideal. There is not a crumb that 
falls from His hand, or the soul of a warrior 
that passes upward to Valhalla, without a di- 
vine purpose. So why should we moralize 
on perpetual peace, and doubt I The wars of 
nations are not the petty strifes of individual 
men. The very magnitude of the stake at is- 
sue in a war that is believed to be a righteous 
one exalts the souls of those who perish for 
their cause, and ennobles the spirits of those 
who survive, for both have sealed their faith 
with life itself. War — righteous war — a war 
for ideals — is no more out of tune with the in- 
finite than the destructive elements of fire, and 
flood, and drought; no more so than the con- 
suming ambitions of the human soul which lead 
men upward and ever upward to the altitudes 
of transcendent thought and deeds. In human 
society there are groups all along the tortuous 

133 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

path of life. Wars for ideals are but the 
eternal friction between groups moving upward 
and downward at varying rates and thus con- 
flicting. Nor was it ever designed by the all- 
wise Power that there should be no crusaders, 
no missionaries, no martyrs on this earth to 
overcome with force and example those who 
have proved unworthy to lead, but yet who 
cling to their scepters of dominion. 

These facts the pacifist in his humanitarian 
enthusiasm ignores, and in his sweeping, all- 
embracing condemnation of human conflict 
makes no distinction between a war for an 
ideal and a tribal foray, between a Christian 
soldier and a murderous bandit, between hu- 
man suffering as a moral sacrifice, and death 
through unlawful violence, and often goes so 
far as to speak of the brutalizing effect of war 
even upon the conscious champions of an ideal ! 

The law of recompense is immutable. How 
happy is he who can with Aristotle, and Plato, 
and Carlyle see the God-head in the cannon's 
flash and smoke of battle, and in the din of 
strife detect the rumble of Jehovah's wheels. 
How vapid and uninspiring is the faith of those 
who like Tolstoi and Bloch can only see the 
blanching faces and hear the shrieks of the 

134 



FEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE 

dying — who know only the pathological side of 
war. 

Pacifism dates from the first battle among 
men — it is as old as war itself. But still there 
are Lowells who can write : 

* * The best guide from old to new is Peace — 
Yet, Freedom, thou canst scantify the sword! 
Bravely to do whatever the time demands. 
Whether with pen or sword, and not to flinch, 
This is the task that fits heroic hands: 
So are Truth's boundaries widened inch by inch. 
I do not love the Peace which tyrants make; 
The calm she breeds let swords' lightning break! 
It is the tyrants who have beaten out 
Plowshares and pruning hooks to spears and swords, 
And shall I pause and moralize and doubt? 
Whose veins run water let him mete his words ! ' ' 

It is through service in a righteous cause 
that men have widened Truth's boundaries inch 
by inch. It can only be through the universal 
service in arms of our citizens that those boun- 
daries wrested from the wilderness of tyranny 
by our patriot forefathers will be preserved, 
and within them that freedom which has sancti- 
fied their swords. It is a mistake, nay more, 
a crime upon humanity, to teach the race that 

135 



THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 

to fight for the blessings it has inherited is 
wrong, or to encourage our men to neglect any 
means by which they may protect their price- 
less heritage. All of our men need not be 
actually trained as soldiers, but the whole race, 
men and women alike should be rendered war- 
riors at heart. Every man should be subject 
to compulsory service whether trained or not. 
The actual training of a sufficiently large pro- 
portion of our men will make warriors of the 
whole race — ^warriors with a hatred of militar- 
ism and injustice in their hearts that will for- 
ever guarantee the persistence of our demo- 
cratic institutions. 

*^With us the decision rests. If we should 
decide wrongly — it is not the loss of prestige, 
it is not the narrowed bounds we have to fear, 
it is the judgment of the dead, the despair of 
the living, of the inarticulate myriads who have 
trusted to us, it is the arraigning eyes of the 
unborn. Who can confront this unappalledT' 

In making our decision shall we deny the 
wisdom of God who imposes upon His people 
the ordeal of battle, and yet continue to raise 
aloft our national hymn — Lord God of Hosts, 
Lord God of Hosts, protect us by Thy might ! 



136 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

One who wishes to study the scientific organi- 
zation of armies, and the principles underlying 
the modern military institutions, must prepare 
himself to examine the authorities of Europe. 
Fortunately, many of the great works of the 
political and military writers of Europe have 
been translated into English. The knowledge 
of the American people of things military is 
based almost entirely upon the works of their 
own statesmen and the popular narratives of 
their soldier heroes, who, as a rule, while brave 
and patriotic, have been poorly educated as 
compared with the military students of Eu- 
rope. 

The following list might be multiplied indefi- 
nitely, but in it will be found many landmarks 
in the progress of thought, and the works enu- 
merated will afford that authoritative infor- 
mation upon which the student may alone ar- 
rive at an intelligent conviction. 

139 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Delafield, Art of War in Europe in 1854-5-6. 

Reeves, Military Education in tlie United 
States. 

Seeley, Life and Times of Stein. 

Klippel, Biography of Scharnliorst (German). 

Osgood, The American Colonies in the 17th 
Century. 

Beuce, Institutional History of Virginia in the 
17th Century. 

RoEMEK, Cavalry, Its History, Management and 
Uses in War. 

Hauskath, Treitschke, His Doctrines and His 
life. 

Delbruck, Life of Gneisenau (German). 

Spiegel, Dr. Albert Zizaus Hardenberg (Ger- 
man). 

VoN DER GoLTz, The Nation in Arms. 

Clausewitz, War. 

Wise, Empire and Armament. 

BouTAEic, Institutions militaires de la France. 

Gautier, La Chevalrie. 

ScHULTz, Das Hofische Leben zur Zeit der Min- 
nesinger. 

Ranke, Geschichte Wallensteins. 

Geijer, Geschichte Schwedens (German transla- 
tion). 

Villet, Histoire des institutions politiques. 

140 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Seignobos, Feudal Regime (Dow translation). 

Stephens, Commentaries on the Laws of Eng- 
land. 

Maemont, De Pesprit des institutions mili- 
taires. 

HuiDEKOPEE, The Present State of Unprepared- 
ness. 

Upton, Military Policy of the United States. 

Geeen, The Present Military Situation in the 
United States. 

SoMBAET, Krieg und Kapitalismus. 

Steinmetz, Die Philosophic des Krieges. 

TocQUEviLLE, Democracy in the United States. 

Dodge, Gustavus Adolphus. 

Thoumas, Les Anciennes armees franQaises des 
origines a 1870. 

Jeeeam, Armies of the World. 

Ceamb, Origin and Destiny of Imperial Britain. 



141 



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